shall have the pleasure of taking me that far."

"And about a week in Kalispell!"

"'Twill discommode me, but 'pon honor, I like your honest simple face,
and I won't desert you. Besides! I know a guy in Kalispell, and I can
panhandle the sordid necessary chuck while I wait for you. Little you
know, my cockerel, how facile a brain your 'bus so lightly bears. When
I've cashed in on the mine, I'll take my rightful place among the
motored gentry. Not merely as actor and spieler, promoter and inventor
and soldier and daring journalist, have I played my role, but also I am
a mystic, an initiate, a clairaudient, a psychometrist, a Rosicrucian
adept, and profoundly psychic--in fact, my guide is Hermes Trismegistus
himself! I also hold a degree as doctor of mento-practic, and my studies
in astro-biochemistry----"

"Gonna stop. All off. Make little coffee," said Milt.

He did not desire coffee, and he did not desire to stop, but he did
desperately desire not to inflict Pinky Parrott upon the Boltwoods. It
was in his creed as a lover of motors never to refuse a ride to any one,
when he had room. He hoped to get around his creed by the hint implied
in stopping. Pinky's reaction to the hint was not encouraging:

"Why, you have a touch of the psychic's flare! I could do with coffee
myself. But don't trouble to make a fire. I'll do that. You drive--I do
the camp work. Not but that I probably drive better than you, if you
will permit me to say so. I used to do a bit of racing, before I took up
aviation."

"Huh! Aviation! What machine d'you fly?"

"Why, why--a biplane!"

"Huh! What kind of motor?"

"Why, a foreign one. The--the---- It was a French motor."

"Huh! What track you race on?"

"The---- Pardon me till I build a fire for our _al fresco_ collation,
and I my driving history will unfold."

But he didn't do either.

After he had brought seven twigs, one piece of sagebrush, and a six-inch
board, Pinky let Milt finish building the fire, while he told how much
he knew about the mysteries of ancient Egyptian priests.

Milt gave up hope that Pinky would become bored by waiting and tramp on.
After one hour of conversational deluge, he decided to let Pinky
drive--to make him admit that he couldn't. He was wrong. Pinky could
drive. He could not drive well, he wabbled in his steering, and he
killed the engine on a grade, but he showed something of the same
dashing idiocy that characterized his talk. It was Milt not Pinky, w