e turned that way just as if I'd
told him to. Can you beat that?"

Starr did not say. Naturally, since she was a girl, and pretty, and since
he was human, he was busy wondering what her chum's brother was like. He
picked up a small rock and shied it at a goat that was not doing a thing
that it shouldn't do, and felt better. He remembered then that at any
rate her chum's brother was a long way off, and that he himself had
nothing much to complain of right now. Then Helen May spoke again and
shifted his thoughts to another subject.

"I believe I'd rather have a horse like this," she said, "than own that
big, lovely take-me-to-glory car that was pathfinding around like a
million dollars, a little while ago. I'll own up now that I was weeping
partly because four great big porky men could ride around on cushions a
foot thick, while a perfectly nice girl had to plough through the sand
afoot. The way they skidded past me and buried me in a cloud of dust made
me mad enough to throw rocks after them. Pigs! They never even stopped to
ask if I wanted a ride or anything. They all glared at me through their
goggles as if I hadn't any business walking on their desert."

"Did you know them?" Starr came and walked beside her, glancing
frequently at her face.

"No, of course I didn't. I don't know anybody but the stage driver. I
wouldn't have ridden with them, anyway. From what I saw of them they
looked like Mexicans. But you'd think they might have shown some
interest, wouldn't you?"

"I sure would," Starr stated with emphasis. "What kinda car was it, did
you notice? Maybe I know who they are."

"Oh, it was a great big black car. They went by so fast and I was so
tired and hot and--and pretty near swearing mad, I didn't notice the
number at all. And they were glaring at me, and I was glaring at them,
and then the driver stepped on the accelerator just at a little crook in
the road, and the hind wheels skidded about a ton of sand into my face
and they were gone, like they were running from a speed cop. I'd much
rather have a nice little automatic pony like this one," she added
feelingly. "You don't have to bundle yourself up in dusters and goggles
and things when you take a ride, do you? It--it makes the bigness of the
country, and the barrenness of it, somehow fit together and take you into
the pattern, when you ride a horse over it, don't you think?"

"I guess so," Starr assented, with an odd little slurring accent on the
last