long now."

"Well, say," Vic objected, rubbing his tousled blond hair into a
distracted, upstanding condition, "I wish you'd show me just how
you shift his gears. How the dickens do you do it? He don't know
what you say."

Before he left, Starr showed him the gestures, and Vic that evening
practised them so enthusiastically that he nearly drove Helen May wild.
Perhaps that is why, when she was copying a sentence where Holman Sommers
had mentioned the stars of the universe, Helen May spelled stars,
"Starr's" and did not notice the mistake at all.

CHAPTER TEN

THE TRAIL OF SILVERTOWN CORDS

Having wasted a couple of hours more than he intended to spend in
delivering the dog, Starr called upon Rabbit to make up those two hours
for him. And, being an extremely misleading little gray horse, with a
surprising amount of speed and endurance stored away under his hide,
Rabbit did not fall far short of doing so.

Starr had planned an unexpected visit to the Medina ranch. In the guise
of stock-buyer his unexpectedness would be perfectly plausible, and he
would be well pleased to arrive there late, so long as he did not arrive
after dark. Just before sundown would do very well, he decided. He would
catch Estan Medina off his guard, and he would have the evening before
him, in case he wanted to scout amongst the arroyos on the way home.

Starr very much wanted to know who drove an automobile without lights
into isolated arroyos and over the desert trails at night. He had not,
strange to say, seen any machine with Silvertown cord tires in San Bonito
or in Malpais, though he had given every car he saw the second glance to
make sure. He knew that such tires were something new and expensive, so
much so that they were not in general use in that locality. Even in El
Paso they were rarely seen at that time, and only the fact that the great
man who gave him his orders had happened to be using them on his machine,
and had mentioned the fact to Starr, who was honored with his friendship,
had caused Starr to be familiar with them and to recognize instantly the
impress they left in soft soil. It was a clue, and that was the best he
could say for it. It was just a little better than nothing, he decided.
What he wanted most was to see the machine itself at close range, and to
see the men who rode in it--and I am going to tell you why.

There was a secret political movement afoot in the Southwest; a movement
hidden so far undergr