ever since!"

"It ain't the cocktails that give you the headache," the Kid tells me,
"it was the check. And you must have had a bun on before that, anyhow,
because you paid it! But that's got nothin' to do with this here trip
to Frisco. I'm not goin' to stop anywheres for no powders. I'm gonna
get somethin' I've needed for a long time!"

"What is it," I asks him, "a clean collar?"

"I wish you'd save that comedy for some rainy Sunday," he says; "that
stuff of yours is about as funny as a broken arm! Since I been out
here with these swell actors, I been changin' my clothes so often that
I'll bet my body thinks I'm kiddin' it. Stop knockin' and come over to
Frisco with me and--"

I don't know what else he was goin' to say, because just at that minute
a Kansas cyclone on wheels come between us and I come to in a ditch
about five feet from where the Kid is tryin' to see can he really stand
on his head. When I had picked up enough ambition to get to my feet, I
went over and jacked up the Kid. About half a mile up the road the
thing which had attacked us is turnin' around.

"Run for your life!" I yells to the Kid. "It's comin' back!"

Before we could pick our hidin' places, the thing has drawed up in
front of us and we see it's one of them trick autos known to the trade
as racin' cars. I recognized it right away as belongin' to Miss
Vincent. The owner was in the car and beside her was Edmund De Vronde,
the shop-girls' delight. The Kid and De Vronde had took to each other
from the minute they first met like a ferret does to a rat. It was a
case of hate at first sight. So you can figure that this little
incident did nothin' to cement the friendship. Miss Vincent leaps out
of the thing and comes runnin' over to us.

"Good Heavens!" she says. "You're not hurt, are you?"

She's lookin' right past me and at the Kid like it made little or no
difference whether _I_ was damaged or not.

The Kid throws half an acre of California out of his collar and removes
a few pebbles and a cigar butt from his ear.

"No!" he growls, with a sarcastical smile. "Was they many killed?"

She takes out a little trick silk handkerchief and wipes off his face
with it.

"I meant to step on the foot brake," she explains, "and I must have
stepped on the gas by mistake!"

"You must have stepped on the dynamite," I butts in, "because it blowed
me into the ditch!"

The Kid shakes a bucket or so of sand out of his hair and looks