Presently we stopped and gave her a drink. She was boiling like a little tea kettle, and she was pretty thirsty.
"They all do it," said Bill. Of course his name was Bill. "Especially the big he-ones. High altitude. Going slow with your throttle wide open. You're all right if you got plenty water. If not, why then ketch a cow and use the milk. Only go slow or you'll git all clogged up with butter."
We clambered aboard and proceeded. That distant dreamful _mesa_ had drawn very near. It was scandalous. The aloof desert whose terror, whose beauty, whose wonder, whose allure was the awe of infinite space that could be traversed only in toil and humbleness, had been contracted by a thing that now said 29,265.
"At this rate we'll get there before six o'clock," I remarked, hopefully.
As we crawled along, still on high gear--that tin car certainly pulled strongly--a horseman emerged from a fold in the hills. He was riding a sweat-covered, mettlesome black with a rolling eye. His own eye was bitter, and likewise the other features of his face. After trying in vain to get the frantic animal within twenty feet of our _mitrailleuse,_ he gave it up.
"Got anything for me?" he shrieked at Bill.
Bill leisurely turned off the switch, draped his long legs over the side of the car, and produced his makings.
"Sent for a new grass rope. How's feed down Mogallon way?"
"That," said Jim, with an extraordinary bitterness, "is already a gaited hoss. He has fo' gaits now."
"Four gaits," repeated Bill, incredulously. "I'm in the stink wagon business. I ain't aiming to buy no hosses. What four gaits you claim he's got?"
"Start, stumble, fall down _and_ git up," said Jim.
Shortly after this joyous _rencontre_ we topped the rise, and, looking back, could realize the grade we had been ascending.
The road led white and straight as an arrow to dwindle in perspective to a mere thread. The little car leaped forward on the invisible down grade. Again I anchored myself to one of the top supports. A long, rangy fowl happened into the road just ahead of us, but immediately flopped clumsily, half afoot, half a-wing, to one side in the brush, like a stampeded hen.
"Road runner," said Bill, with a short laugh. "Remember how they used to rack along in front of a hoss for miles, keeping just ahead, lettin' out a link when you spurred up? Aggravatin' fowl! They got over tryin' to keep ahead of gasoline."