The formality over, he replied, “I don’t know.” We suggested planks,--he knew of none. We put him down, bitterly, as an ill-natured dolt. But, as we learned later, Texans move slowly, but their hearts are in the right place. He was only warming up. Finally he spat again, lighted a cigarette, got off his horse, silently untied a rope from his saddle, and bound it about our back wheel, disregarding calmly the mire sucking at his boots. I started the engine. No results. All three watched the fettered Gulliver helplessly. Then, while Toby and I lifted out heavy suitcases and boxes from the seat which held the chains, he watched us, with the mild patience of an ox. Reinforcements came, a moment later, from a decrepit buggy, containing a boy and two girls. They consulted, on seeing our plight, and the girls, hearty country lasses in bare feet and sunbonnets, urged their escort, apparently to his relief, to stay the Sunday courtship and give us aid. Of more agile fettle than our first knight, he galvanized him into a semblance of motion. Together they gathered brush, and, denuding their horses for the purpose, tied bits of rope to the rear wheels. The engine started, stalled, and started again a dozen times. At last the car stirred a bit from her lethargy, the two boys put their country strength against her broad back and pushed; the engine roared like a man-eating tiger--and we got out. But we still had to conquer a black stretch of about one hundred yards, in which one of our rescuers had broken an axle, so he cheerfully told us, only yesterday. We were faced with the problem to advance or retreat? Either way was mud. We might get caught between two morasses, and starve to death before the sun dried the roads. We might turn back, but why return to conditions we had worked two hours to escape? We decided to advance boldly, and, if need be, gloriously break an axle. “Race her for all she’s worth,” counseled the livelier of our rescuers, from the running board where he acted as pilot. I raced her, though it nearly broke my heart to mistreat the engine so cruelly. We wavered, struck a rut, and were gripped in it, as in the bonds of matrimony, for better or worse. It led us to a gruesome mass of “soup,” with a yawning hole at the bottom. “Here’s where I broke my axle,” shouted my pilot. To break the shock meant to stick; to race ahead might mean a shattered car. There was no time to think it over. I pushed down on the gas. A fearful bump, and we went on, the mud sucking at the tires with every inch we advanced. Cheering, the others picked their way to us. Our friends piled our baggage into the tonneau. Toby and I looked at each other, worried by the same problem,--the problem that never ceased to bother us until we reached Chicago;--to tip or not to tip?