th only the briefest of
pauses in which to shift the gears. Wemple backed up the hard formation
on the inside bank till the car seemed standing on end, rushed ahead
till the earth of the outer edge broke under the front tires and
splashed in the water. Davies, now off, and again on the running board
when needed, accompanied the car in its jerky and erratic progress,
tossing robes and coats under the tires, calling instructions to Drexel
similarly occupied on the other side, and warning Miss Drexel out of the
way.

"Oh, you Merry Olds, you Merry Olds, you Merry Olds," Wemple muttered
aloud, as if in prayer, as he wrestled the car about the narrow area,
gaining sometimes inches in pivoting it, sometimes fetching back up the
inner wall precisely at the spot previously attained, and, once, having
the car, with the surface of the roadbed under it, slide bodily and
sidewise, two feet down the road.

The clapping of Miss Drexel's hands was the first warning Davies
received that the feat was accomplished, and, swinging on to the running
board, he found the car backing in the straight-away up the next zig-zag
and Wemple still chanting ecstatically, "Oh, you Merry Olds, you Merry
Olds!"

There were no more grades nor zigzags between them and Tampico, but, so
narrow was the primitive road, two miles farther were backed before
space was found in which to turn around. One thing of importance
did lie between them and Tampico--namely the investing lines of the
constitutionalists. But here, at noon, fortune favored in the form of
three American soldiers of fortune, operators of machine guns, who had
fought the entire campaign with Villa from the beginning of the advance
from the Texan border. Under a white flag, Wemple drove the car across
the zone of debate into the federal lines, where good fortune, in the
guise of an ubiquitous German naval officer, again received them.

"I think you are nearly the only Americans left in Tampico," he told
them. "About all the rest are lying out in the Gulf on the different
warships. But at the Southern Hotel there are several, and the situation
seems quieter."

As they got out at the Southern, Davies laid his hand on the car and
murmured, "Good old girl!" Wemple followed suit. And Miss Drexel,
engaging both men's eyes and about to say something, was guilty of a
sudden moisture in her own eyes that made her turn to the car with a
caressing hand and repeat, "Good old girl!"

***END OF THE