"Sure thing," continued the other. "I'm right dead on it every time. What are you hoofing it for? Didn't Old Man Strong send along his automobile?"
"He didn't know when to expect me," replied Peter. "I suppose I ought to have telegraphed."
"There's a cable-car at twenty centavos or an automobile at a dollar," announced the man.
Peter expressed his preference for the latter.
"Come along right now, and I'll get you up," said his benefactor, and grasping Peter by the arm, he led him to a kiosk-like structure similar to those he had noticed at almost every street corner.
The rest was a simple matter. Young Corbold's companion said something in Spanish to the polite uniformed person in charge of the Kiosk. Peter put down a dollar and was given a ticket, which he was informed he was to place in his hatband. An electrically-operated syren on the roof of the Kiosk gave a clear but not aggressive note, and almost before Peter could be escorted to the edge of the pavement, a motor-car had arrived and was awaiting him.
The mulatto driver gave a glance at the words on the ticket in Peter's hat. That was all that was necessary. That piece of pasteboard was an order given by the Republic of Rioguay that, in consideration of the sum of one dollar having been paid, the driver of the state-licensed vehicle was to take his fare to El Toro by the shortest possible route.
Without that ticket, Peter might have sought and sought in vain for a conveyance.
He had expected, somewhat naturally, that his Yankee benefactor was going to El Toro with him. But he was mistaken. The man raised his hat and disappeared.
"Might have asked him his name, any old way," thought Peter. "P'r'aps Uncle Brian will know who he is. My word! Rioguay is quite a go-ahead show!"
It did not take the motor long to get clear of the town. Soon the tree-lined streets gave place to a broad, dusty road that ran almost in a straight line for miles between fields of maize and open expanses of sun-baked grass, dotted here and there with _adobe_ huts. Nearer and nearer drew the rugged, saw-like mountains, until Peter began to wonder whether El Toro lay on the far side of the formidable sierras.
But at length the car turned abruptly to the right, plunging into a defile through a far-flung spur of the main chain of mountains. For the next mile nothing of the work of man's hands was visible, except the well-kept road and the inevitable telephone wires supported by substantial poles of ferro-concrete, until, swinging round a sharp corner, the car emerged into more open country, and gave Peter his first sight of El Toro.