More bashful than most Texans, the lank Horace followed me in painful silence for a few yards. Then in a burst of confidence, he said, “When you come in just now, I thought it was maw dressed up to fool us. Yes, sir, I sure did.” My glimpse of his septuagenarian parent would not have led me to suspect her of such prankishness, but appearances are often deceitful. For all I knew she may have been just the life of the family, doubling up Horace and his paw in long writhes of helpless mirth at her impersonations. So I accepted the compliment silently and led our rescuer to the car. Once more I triumphed unworthily over Toby. For she had hinted that my fast driving had flattened the tire, but investigation revealed a crooked nail,--the bane of motoring in a cattle country. Horace proved most business-like in handling tools. In less than half an hour, bashfully spurred on by our admiration, he had cut the lock and helped us change the tire. Then he saw our sign,--and said it. As if it were a thought new-born to the ages, he smiled at his own conceit, and remarked, “You’re a lawng ways from home!” As Horace did not smoke, we drove away from the ranch-house eternally in his debt. We put him down to the credit of Texas, however, where he helped off-set sand-storms and mud holes, and added him to the fast growing list of cavaliers who had rescued us from our folly. The storm had died, and with it our bad luck had apparently departed, but when a day begins badly, it is never safe to predict until the car is bedded down for the night. According to a bad habit she has, Toby telescoped two paragraphs of the route card, skipping the middle entirely. Consequently we turned left when we should have gone right,--and found our front wheels banked where a road had been playfully altered by the wind to a mountain of sand. On all sides were waist-high drifts of fine white sea sand, from which the tops of mesquite bushes showed. We could not turn, so we tried running straight ahead,--and stuck. Twilight had fallen, and if there were a way out, it was no longer discernible. At what seemed a short half mile, a light gleamed from a house. Once more, I cravenly went for help, while the optimistic Toby began to shovel sand with our toy shovel. The half mile trebled itself, and still the house was no nearer. At last I came to the end, only to find that a wide canal separated us and the car from the road. I shouted across to two men in a corral, and at last they heard and came to the edge of the canal while I asked to borrow a rope. They debated a while, perhaps doubting my intentions, but finally threw a rope in the back of a little car, cranked it and, coming to the bank of the canal, helped me across. Unlike a Westerner who when he leaves a spot never fails to orient himself, I had not noticed in which direction I had struck out from the car. I fear my deliverers thought me a mild kind of incompetent when I confessed I had no idea where to find it: darkness