at mud-covered mass emerged from
the swale that had sought to engulf and possess it, emerged slowly and
awkwardly, like a dinosauros emerging from its primeval ooze.

The man in the car stepped down from his driving-seat, once he was
sure of firm ground under his wheels again, and walked slowly and
wistfully about his resurrected devil-wagon.

"The wages of sin is mud," he said as I trotted up to him. "And how
much better it would have been, O Singing Pine-Tree, if I'd never
taken that car!"

The poor chap was undoubtedly a little wrong in the head, but likable
withal, and not ill-favored in appearance, and a man that one should
try to make allowances for.

"It would have been much better," I agreed, wondering how long it
would be before the Mounted Police would be tracking him down and
turning him to making brooms in the prison-factory at Welrina.

"Now, if you'll kindly trot ahead," he announced as he relighted his
little briar pipe, "and show me the trail to the ranch of the blighted
windmill, I'll idle along behind you."

I resented the placidity with which he was accepting a situation that
should have called for considerable meekness on his part. And I sat
there for a silent moment or two on Paddy, to make that resentment
quite obvious to him.

"What's your name?" I asked, the same as I'd ask the name of any new
help that arrived at Alabama Ranch.

"Peter Ketley," he said, for once both direct and sober-eyed.

"All right, Peter," I said, as condescendingly as I was able. "Just
follow along, and I'll show you where the bunk-house is."

It was his grin, I suppose, that irritated me. So I started off on
Paddy and went like the wind. I don't know whether he called it idling
or not, but once or twice when I glanced back at him that touring-car
was bounding like a reindeer over some of the rougher places in the
trail, and I rather fancy it got some of the mud shaken off its
running-gear before it pulled up behind the upper stable at Alabama
Ranch.

"You ride like a _ritt-meister_," he said, with an approvingly
good-natured wag of the head, as he came up as close as Paddy would
permit.

"_Danke-schoen!_" I rather listlessly retorted, "And if you leave the
car here, close beside this hay-stack, it'll probably not be seen
until after dinner. Then some time this afternoon, if the coast is
clear, you can get it covered up."

I was a little sorry, the next moment, that I'd harped still again on
an act which m