At last, a passing stranger suggested we take the car to the nearby Fort, where a new welding machine had recently been installed. We chugged up the hill, attracting the notice of several soldiers from East Boston, on whom our Massachusetts number produced a wave of nostalgia. By this time, so used were we to being beneficiaries of entire strangers that before hailing anyone likely to offer to do us a favor, we fixed smiles fairly dripping with saccharine on our faces. A sergeant, hearing sympathetically our story, sent us to a lieutenant. He wavered. “I hate not to oblige a lady, ma’am, but this is government property, and we aint allowed to do outside work.” Looking at his stern face, we decided it would take at least an hour to win him over. Without moving a muscle he continued---- “But, seein’ as you’re a lady and a long ways from home, and can’t git accommodated otherwise, you run your car back to the garage and I’ll send a sergeant down to get the part, and he’ll have it welded for you in a couple of hours.” Two hours later not only the sergeant but the lieutenant were at the garage to see that the part went back properly into the engine. Meanwhile, doubting the ethics of letting Uncle Sam be our mechanic, we had provided two boxes of Camels for our benefactors, having learned that cigarettes will often be acceptable where money will not. The part was perfectly welded, the sergeant replaced it with military efficiency, and then we exchanged confidences. The lieutenant told us he was a “long-horn,” but had been, before the war, a foreman in the very factory which had built our car. Which explained his cordiality, if explanation were needed in a land where everyone is cordial. We found that respect for the sterling worth of our car helped us along our way appreciably,--people everywhere approved it as “a good car,” and extended their approval to its inmates. The lieutenant nonplused us by refusing both pay and tobacco, but indicated that we might bestow both on the sergeant. He asked us to let him know when we came again to Texas, and we promised willingly, thanked Uncle Sam for his chivalry by proxy, and were quickly on our way to Del Rio. Texas had not yet failed us. CHAPTER VI “DOWN BY THE RIO GRANDE” Every thriving Western town, if its politics are right, looks down on its hotels and up to its post-office. Del Rio was no exception; her granite post-office, imposing enough for three towns of its size, suggested Congressional sensitiveness to fences, while down street a block or two, the weather-beaten boards of “Frank’s,” with its creaking verandahs and uncarpeted lobby, printed the earlier pages of the little settlement, which, straddling the river from Mexico, had become the nucleus for frontier trade eddying to its banks.