At sight of the fallen car, the mules gave a gently ironic side-glance, stepped into place, waited quietly, and at the word of command, stepped forward nonchalantly, while I started the car simultaneously. It took them exactly five minutes to do what eight men, two women, two Fords and a Cadillac had failed to do in two hours’ hard work. For days after, when we passed a mule, we offered him silent homage. While Toby, looking and acting like a guilty wretch, piled the baggage into the car, I approached Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Poole, who stood watching the rescued leviathan with eyes gleaming satisfaction, and put the usual timid question. “Will you tell me what I can offer all these people for helping us out?” Mr. Sinclair, owner of the stalwart mules, smiled and said: “I shouldn’t offer them a thing. We all get into trouble one time or another, and have to be helped out. Just you tell them ‘thank you’ and I reckon that’ll be all the pay they want.” And before we could turn around to carry out his injunction, half the crowd had melted away! To all motorists who become “boaged,” I beg to recommend the mud-hole of my friends, Mr. Poole and Mr. Sinclair, of Lissie, Texas. CHAPTER V NIBBLING AT THE MAP OF TEXAS Visiting an ostrich farm is as thrilling as going in wading, but to be thorough, we did our duty by San Antonio’s plumed and gawky giants before starting again on our well-nigh hopeless task of making an impression on the State of Texas. When we looked at our mileage record we were encouraged, only to be cast down again by a glance at the map, whose south-west corner we had only begun to nibble at in six days’ faithful plodding. It was an incentive to an early start. We filled our tank with gas at the tiled station near the Alamo, rejoicing in the moderate price. In one respect, at least, Texas is the motorists’s paradise. Gasoline is cheap, oil is cheap, storage for the night ranges from “two bits” to half a dollar, while clear weather and local honesty make it possible to avoid even that expense by leaving the car overnight in the Garage of the Blue Sky. Tires are mended and changed for a quarter, and in some places for nothing. And garage-keepers are honest,--except when, yielding to local patriotism, they describe the state of the roads.