nly in developing new symptoms.

At a point about fifty miles from the "town" so deeply longed for, a
lone cow-punch appeared on the bank.

"How far to Rocky Point?" I cried.

"Oh, something less than two hundred miles!" drawled the horseman. (How
carelessly they juggle with miles in that country!)

"It's just a little place, isn't it?" I continued.

"Little place!" answered the cow-puncher; "hell, no!"

"What!" I cried in glee; "Is it really a town of importance?" I had
visions of a budding metropolis, full of gasoline and grub.

"I guess it ain't a little place," explained the rider; "_w'y, they've
got nigh onto ten thousand cattle down there_!"

Ten minutes after that, Charley, after a desperate but unsuccessful fit
of cranking, straightened the kink out of his back, mopped the
perspiration from his face--_and swore_!

Almost immediately I felt, or at least thought I felt, a distinct change
in the temper of the crew--for the worse. We used the better part of two
days covering the last fifty miles into Rocky Point, only to find that
the place consisted of a log ranch-house, two women, an old man, and
"Texas." The cattle and the other men were scattered over a hundred
miles or so of range. The women either would not or could not supply us
with grub, explaining that the nearest railroad town was ninety miles
away. Gasoline was out of the question. We might be able to buy some at
the mouth of Milk River, _two hundred miles down stream_!

"Texas," who made me think of Gargantua, and who had a chest like a
bison bull's, and a drawling fog-horn voice, ran a saloon in an odd
little shanty boat brought down by the flood. He solved the problem for
us.

"You cain't get no gasoline short o' Milk River," he bellowed
drawlingly; "and you sure got to paddle, so you better buy whisky!"

While we were deciding to accept the offered advice, "Texas" whittled a
stick and got off a few jokes of Rabelaisian directness. We laughed
heartily, and as a mark of his appreciation, he gave us five quarts for
a gallon. Which proved, in spite of his appearance, that "Texas" was
very human.

We gave the engine a final trial. It ran by spasms--backwards. Then,
finally, it refused to run at all. We tried to make ourselves believe
that the gasoline was too low in the tank, that the pressure of the oil
had something to do with it. At first we really knew better. But days of
drudgery at the paddles transformed the makeshift hope into somet