We had been warned of “malpais” in the untrustworthy Keyes, but without knowing what it meant. Several thousand years ago, the tire trust manipulated a geologic cataclysm which strewed millions of needle-pointed granite stones over our road. To drive a newly-tired car over malpais hurts one’s sensibilities as much as to stick a safety-pin into a baby, with the difference that the baby recovers. Over chuck-holes, down grades, into arroyos, always over malpais we dashed after their bobbing light, terrified lest a puncture should deprive us of their guardianship. Thirty miles of weariness and mental anguish at the injury we did our springs and tires gave way to relief when the red lantern suddenly turned to the left, and we found ourselves in an open, treeless field. We sank to the ground, worn out with waiting for the “plop” that never sounded. Save for a waning moon, it was pitch dark. We were on a high tableland, with looming hills completely enclosing us. For the first time, it occurred to me that here we were unarmed, at midnight, fifty miles from a settlement, at the mercy of two men fully armed, whom we had known two hours. What was to prevent them from killing or wounding us, taking our car, and abandoning us in that lonely spot where we should never be found? Or, as the novelist says,--Worse? I could see Toby gripped by the same terror. Chaperoned only by the Continental Divide, with not even a tree to dodge behind if they pointed their arsenal our way, we wondered for a fleeting moment if we had done wisely. Our neighbors for the night pulled two bedding rolls from their car, threw them on the ground, and announced they had made their camp. An awkward moment followed. We looked for a sheltered place for our tent, but there was none. Seeming to have no other motive than that, lacking a tree, we had to sling our tent-rope over the car, we managed to use the old lady as a discreet chaperone, placing her in front of our tent-door, which we could enter by crawling over the running-board. With widening smiles they took it all in; took in our efforts to be ladies, took in our folding stove, folding lantern and tiny air pillows. As we put together our folding shovel and proceeded to dig a hip trench, their politeness cracked, and a chuckle oozed out. “My!” said Tucson, as profanely as that, “you’re all fixed up for camping out, aint ye?” Our tent invited, after our weary day, but an expectant something in our host’s manner made us hesitate. Politeness, ordinary gratitude in fact, since we had nothing but our company to offer, seemed to demand that we visit awhile. We sat on a bedding roll; Biron joined us, while the parson-like Tucson took the one nearby. “Was you ever anyways near to being hung?” Biron shied a pebble at a cactus as he put this question. All in all, it was as good a conversational opening as the weather,--not so rock-ribbed, perhaps, but with more dramatic possibilities.