r. He didn't know what it
meant, except that it was a cinch she wasn't wishin' him good luck.
That psychological thing was past me, too. I looked it up in the
dictionary, and it was there all right, but it could have been in
Russia as far as I was concerned, because the way it described it was
over my head. The Kid finally puts it right up to Miss Vincent, and
she tells him to find out for himself.

"Go over to that trick sanitarium of yours, and ask Miss Woods," she
tells him scornfully. "Maybe _she_ can tell you what it means!"

But at two o'clock, when the Kid is leavin' for his daily maulin' bee
with big Arthur, she comes along in her racin' car and asks him to go
to Los Angeles with her. The Kid stalls and says he's just about got
time to get over and give the South American entry a workout, although
he'd rather take the ride with her than defend his title against a
one-armed blind man. She frowns for a minute, and then she smiles and
says hop in with her and she'll drive him over to the sanitarium.

When they blowed in that night at seven o'clock, I seen the Kid looks
kinda worried, while he's washin' the Golden West off his face and
neck, so I ask him how Arthur is comin' along. Scanlan coughs a couple
of times and then he says he don't know, because he wasn't able to get
over there that afternoon--the first he'd missed since I promised the
world's champion girl I'd assist her. While I'm still bawlin' him out,
he claims it wasn't his fault, because the car broke down in the middle
of California and they had to get towed back.

I _will_ say I was sorry to find out that Miss Vincent wasn't above a
little rough stuff! Oh, you ladies!

The next day Genaro suddenly decides to take a scene in the Kid's
movie, and as we was under contract we had to stay. The third
afternoon, Miss Vincent gets a terrible headache and the Kid has to sit
on the hotel porch with her, readin' out loud her press notices from
the movie magazines.

I kept out of it, but thinkin' about Arthur and that little nurse over
there had me bitin' nails, and the next day I told the Kid if he didn't
go out and trade wallops with Arthur, I was through as his pilot. I
said that right out loud in front of Miss Vincent, lookin' her right in
them famous baby-blue eyes of hers. But you can't figure women--she
crossed me and tells the Kid to go and she'd go with him!

We went out in her racin' car, with me ridin' on the runnin' board and
thin