lly preferred to make his own trail, if
tracks told anything. Within half a mile of the Medina rancho Starr saw
where an automobile had swerved sharply off the trail and had taken to
the hard-packed sand of a dry arroyo that meandered barrenly off to the
southeast. He turned and examined the trail over which he had traveled,
saw that it offered no more discouragement to an automobile than any
other bit of trail in that part of the country, and with another glance
at the yellow ribbon of road before him, he also swerved to the
southeast.

For a mile the machine had labored, twisting this way and that to avoid
rocky patches or deep cuts where the spring freshets had dug out the
looser soil. So far as Starr could discover there was nothing to bring a
machine up here. The arroyo was as thousands of other arroyos in that
country. The sides sloped up steeply, or were worn into perpendicular
banks. It led nowhere in particular; it was not a short cut to any place
that he knew of. The trail to Medina's ranch was shorter and smoother,
supposing Medina's ranch were the objective point of the trip.

Starr could not see any sense in it, and that is why he followed the
tortuous track to where the machine had stopped. That it had stood there
for some time he knew by the amount of oil that had leaked down into the
sand. He did not know for certain, since he did not know the oil-leaking
habits of that particular car, but he guessed that it had stood there for
a couple of hours at least before the driver had backed and turned around
to retrace his way to the trail.

In these days of gasoline travel one need not be greatly surprised to
meet a car, or see the traces of one, in almost any out-of-the-way spot
where four wheels can possibly be made to travel. On the other hand, the
man at the wheel is not likely to send his machine over rocks and through
sand where the traction is poor, and across dry ditches and among
greasewood, just for the fun of driving. There is sport with rod or gun
to lure, or there is necessity to impel, or the driver is lost and wants
to reach some point that looks familiar, or he is trying to dodge
something or somebody.

Starr sat beside that grease spot in the sand and smoked a cigarette
and studied the surrounding hills and tried to decide what had brought
the car up here. Not sport, unless it was hunting of jack rabbits; and
there were more jack rabbits out on the flat than here. There was no
trout stream