out to be entertaining and helpful, and Gray obligingly permitted
him to have his way. When they had finished breakfast, he even
allowed his companion to hire an automobile and driver for him.
They shook hands finally, the best of friends. Mallow wished him
good luck and gravely voiced the hope that he would have fewer
diamonds when he returned. Gray warmly thanked his companion for
his many courtesies and declared they would soon meet again.

Thus far the trip had worked out much as Gray had expected. Now,
as his service car left the town and joined the dusty procession
of vehicles moving country-ward, he covertly studied its driver
and was gratified to note that the fellow bore all the ear-marks
of a thorough scoundrel. What conversation the man indulged in
strengthened that impression.

The Briskow farm, it appeared, lay about twenty miles out, but
twenty miles over oil-field roads proved to be quite a journey.
During the muddy season the driver declared, it might well take a
whole day to make that distance; now that the roads were dry, they
could probably cover it in two or three hours, if the car held
together. Traffic near Ranger was terrific, and how it managed to
move, even at a snail's pace, was a mystery, for to sit a car was
like riding a bucking horse. If there had been the slightest
attempts at road building they were now invisible, and the
vehicular streams followed meandering wagon trails laid down by
the original inhabitants of pre-petroleum days, which had not been
bettered by the ceaseless pounding of the past twelve months. Up
and down, over armored ridges and into sandy arroyos, along
leaning hillsides and across 'dobe flats, baked brick hard by the
sun, the current of travel roared and pounded with reckless