But I’m askin’ you to. It’s started bad for me, but will you stick to me an’ be game?”

“Game is my middle name,” she whispered back, with a flash of fun and fire in her eyes. “I’ll stick if we have to walk. Don’t worry about me. This’s great. You keep your nerve and we’ll give them the merry ha-ha.”

The look of her as she faced him, young and eager and defiant, the quick whispered words that established her championship of him—these more than compensated Cal for the humiliation he had suffered and completely vanquished the dread that had hung over him. He seemed suddenly to acquire an exalted strength, a something which welled up out of his newborn emotion.

“Reckon I’d better confess I’m no mechanic. I don’t know an engine from a fence post,” he said.

Her low laugh was cut short by Wess Thurman drawling out, “Wal, Cal, do you want a team of hosses?”

“Cal, air you drivin’?” queried Arizona, with a grin.

Tim Matthews sauntered down the porch steps with nonchalant confidence.

“Mebbe yore out of gas,” he said, and his whole serene countenance masked the lie of his knowledge.

Wess Thurman strode down off the porch and to the car.

“Cousin,” he drawled, “I reckon you want Miss Stockwell to get home for dinner?”

“Sure. An’ I’ll get her there,” returned Cal.

“Wal, not in thet vehicle, you won’t,” averred Wess. “We’ve got room in the big car for her an’ her packs.”

“How about me?” inquired Cal, with sarcasm.

“Wal, there won’t be room, Cal,” replied Wess, spreading wide his hands. “We’ve shore got a load as it is . . . Mebbe Tim or Pan Handle or Arizona might stay in town an’ let you go with me.”

“I gotta get back tonight,” said Tim.

“Cal, your dad gave me one day off an’ no more. I cain’t afford to lose my job,” said Pan Handle.

“Pard, you shore know I’d do a heap for you, but I come in jest on purpose to get medicine for my hoss,” said Arizona.

It was the usual response, the apparent innocence. Cal saw how Georgiana was studying them, wonderingly, as if fascinated. She saw through them. She was biting her red lips to hold back her merriment. Then Cal thrilled to see Tuck Merry unlimbering his long length out of the back of the car. Cal had forgotten his other passenger.

“Buddy, let me give this can the once over,” he said.

“I used to run a cheese cutter for the Smith Condensed Milk Company.”

His dry, droll manner of speaking apparently jarred on the ears of Wess and his comrades. They hardly knew what to think, and sight of this remarkably tall, thin personage silenced them. They watched him with undisguised amazement. Tuck leisurely went round to the front of the car and threw back the cover of the engine, and craning his long neck he bent his head clear out of sight. He was whistling. Then he straightened up to look over and handle parts of the engine. The crowd took him seriously. But Cal divined that Tuck had more in mind than a possible knowledge of how to start the engine. He rattled things. He turned this and that, with the air of a master mechanic.

“Haw! Haw!” roared the cattleman Bloom from his post on the porch. “Shore this’s a sideshow.”

Merry paid no attention to him, or to the others who laughed at his sally, but went on leisurely examining the engine.

“I don’t know what’s comin’ off, but I’ve a hunch,” Cal whispered to the girl.

“Oh, he’s just too funny,” she whispered back.