“Another mirage!”
“Where?” asked weary Toby, indifferently. At this moment the wonders of Nature meant nothing to her.
“There seem to be two cars,—I can see them quite plainly.”
“There are two cars,” said Toby, and we ran, the pail slopping water on our feet.
With a broad grin on each face, two men watched us approach. They were young; I judged them thirty and thirty-five. They stopped just short of being armed to the teeth. Each wore a cartridge belt, and they shared two rifles and a revolver. The older and the more moderately arsenaled, looked like a parson. The younger wore a tan beaver sombrero, of the velvety, thirty-dollar kind proclaiming its owner a cow-puncher, an old-timer, a hard boiled egg who doesn’t care who knows it. His shirt was of apple-green flannel, his small, high boots festooned with stitching and escalloped with colored leather like a Cuban taxi, his purple neckerchief was knotted with a ring carved from ox-bone, and from his cartridge belt in a carved leather case hung the largest revolver I ever saw. His generous silver spurs were cut in the shape of spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field and Sears-Roebuck combined never turned out a more indisputable vachero. We greeted them with joy; their happy grins told us they would see us through our difficulties. It was nine by the village clock of Rodeo, if they had one, which I doubt. It was not the sort of town which would have a clock, or even an Ingersoll.
“You girls nearly caught us pullin’ out,” Sears-Roebuck greeted us. “We figured how the feller who owned this car would be cussin’ mad, and we was plannin’ to stick around to hear his language, an’ then we seen women’s things in the seat, so we jest had our supper here, while we waited for you.”
It never would have happened east of Chicago. They had waited nearly two hours that they might do us the favor of another hour’s hard work in setting us on dry land again. They had been “making time” for El Paso, and the delay spoiled a half day for them, but they did not complain. They acted as if persuading our dinosaur from her nest of mud were a most delightful joke,—on us, themselves and the car. They did not regard what they were doing as a favor, but as their sole business and recreation in life. In sheer high spirits, Biron, as he speedily introduced himself,—the giddier of the two in dress and deportment,—whooped, cleared the mud-hole in one leap, and pretended to lassoo the inert machine. The other, smiling benevolently at his antics, went steadily to the serious work of harnessing the car.
Toby made a jesting remark to Biron about the revolver hanging at his belt, not from fear but as a pleasantry. Misunderstanding, he unslung it instantly, and tossed it into his car.
“I don’t want that thing,” he elaborated, “it gets in my way.”
They got to work in earnest, with great speed and skill. Twice the rope which they hitched to their car broke as we turned on our power. Meanwhile the old lady churned herself deeper into the mud, skulls, and shin-bones of the pool. After an hour’s work, with much racing of the engine, and a Niagara of splashing mud which covered us all from head to foot, she stirred, heaved over on one side, and groaning like seven devils commanded to come out, lumbered to terra firma, looming beside the pert wrecking car like Leviathan dug out with an hook.