“Come alive, girls,” he called, tossing a flapjack at us. “Throw that into your sunburned hides.” We obeyed this playboy of our Western world without demur. We had barely eaten since the previous morning. At eight we were off. Our car had no spare tire, two broken spring leaves, and a dustpan which dragged on the ground, loosened by miles of high centers. Our friends were in haste to reach El Paso, so we suggested they leave us, but they refused, and became our body guard as far as Deming, stopping when we did, mending our dustpan with a bit of stolen fence wire, getting water and gas for us at Hachita, a dismal little collection of shanties which Biron regretfully described as “the wickedest town in the United States, before prohibition spoiled it. Yessir, prohibition is what ruined New Mexico.” In the midst of a swirling sand storm we said good-by to our friends and asked their names and addresses in order to send them some photographs we had taken. Biron gave his readily,--“Manchester, N. H., is where I was born, but most of my folks live in Fall River, Mass.” It was not the address we expected from a man who had seen worse deeds than Jesse James. It was out of the picture, somehow. I knew Manchester, N. H., and had met nothing in the town so tough and bad as Biron had described himself, unless it were the sandwiches sold in the Boston and Maine station. When we turned to Tucson for his name, we were prepared to have him give the address of a theological seminary, and again we were surprised. For Tucson hesitated and stammered, and took longer recalling his name than is usually needed. I remembered a remark Biron threw off the night before,--“a man gets to calling himself a lot of different names in this country,” and snickered, while Tucson remained grave as a judge. I wondered, if his voluble friend had given him a chance, whether Tucson might have told us something interesting. However, Tucson had just discovered a copper vein on his land, and as this book goes to print may already be a respectable Fifth Avenue millionaire. As we thanked them and said good-by, Toby said, “We can’t be too grateful you saw our sign in the road.” “Sign? What sign?” “Didn’t you see a sign made of white pebbles on the road from Rodeo, asking for help?” “No, we didn’t see no sign. We didn’t come from Rodeo. We came the other road,--over the hills.” There it is. No matter how much one does as Robinson Crusoe would have done, the other characters will not play up to their opportunities. Instead of following your footprints cunningly, step by step, they will insist on catching sight of you across lots, completely spoiling the climax. No doubt Crusoe was firm with infringers on his plot. Probably when they came by the wrong road, he refused to be rescued till they had gone back and done the thing properly. But then, we were very glad to be rescued at all. CHAPTER XII WHY ISLETA’S CHURCH HAS A WOODEN FLOOR