"But perhaps," Mr. Boltwood ardently begged the young man recently so abysmally unimportant, "perhaps you would consent to being my guest, when you cared to--say at hotels in the Park." "'Fraid I couldn't. I'm kind of a lone wolf." "Please! Pretty please!" besought Claire. Her smile was appealing, her eyes on his. Milt bit his knuckles. He looked weak. But he persisted, "No, you'll get over this scrap with our friend. By the way, I'll put the deputy onto him, in the next town. He'll never get out of the county. When you forget him---- Oh no, you can go on fine. You're a good steady driver, and the road's perfectly safe--if you give people the once-over before you pick 'em up. Picking up badmen is no more dangerous here than it would be in New York. Fact, there's lot more hold-ups in any city than in the wildest country. I don't think you showed such awfully good taste in asking Terrible Tim, the two-gun man, right into the parlor. Gee, please don't do it again! Please!" "No," meekly. "I was an idiot. I'll be good, next time. But won't you stay somewhere near us?" "I'd like to, but I got to chase on. Don't want to wear out the welcome on the doormat, and I'm due in Seattle, and---- Say, Miss Boltwood." He swung out of the bug, cranked up, climbed back, went awkwardly on, "I read those books you gave me. They're slick--mean to say, interesting. Where that young fellow in _Youth's Encounter_ wanted to be a bishop and a soldier and everything---- Just like me, except Schoenstrom is different, from London, some ways! I always wanted to be a brakie, and then a yeggman. But I wasn't bright enough for either. I just became a garage man. And I---- Some day I'm going to stop using slang. But it'll take an operation!" He was streaking down the road, and Claire was sobbing, "Oh, the lamb, the darling thing! Fretting about his slang, when he wasn't afraid in that horrible nightmare. If we could just do something for him!" "Don't you worry about him, dolly. He's a very energetic chap. And---- Uh---- Mightn't we drive on a little farther, perhaps? I confess that the thought of our recent guest still in this vicinity----" "Yes, and---- Oh, I'm shameless. If Mohammed Milton won't stay with our car mountain, we're going to tag after him." But when she reached the next hill, with its far shining outlook, there was no Milt and no Teal bug on the road ahead. CHAPTER XI SAGEBRUSH TOURISTS OF THE GREAT HIGHWAY She had rested for two days in Miles City; had seen the horse-market, with horse-wranglers in chaps; had taken dinner with army people at Fort Keogh, once the bulwark against the Sioux, now nodding over the dry grass on its parade ground.