“Stuck, hey?  You oughta kept in the ruts, no matter if they are water-logged.  You never want to turn outa the road on one of these lake beds, huntin’ dry ground.  If it’s wet in the road, you can bank on sinkin’ in to the hocks the minute you turn out.”  He carefully removed the mud pancakes from his shoes by scraping them across the hub of the stalled car and edged back to stand with his arms on his hips while he surveyed the full plight of them.

“She sure is bogged down a-plenty,” he observed, grinning sympathetically.

“Could you hitch on your car, Mister, and pull us out?” This was a woman’s voice, and it thrilled Casey, woman hungry as he was.

Casey put up a hand to his mouth and surreptitiously removed a chew of tobacco almost fresh.  With some effort he pulled his feet closer together, and he lifted his old Stetson and reset it at a consciously rakish angle.  He glanced at the car, behind it and in front, coming back to the depressed male individual before him.  “Yes, ma’am, I’ll get you out, all right.  Sure, I will.”

“We’ve been stalled here for an hour or more,” volunteered the depressed one.  “We was right behind the storm.  Looked a sorry chance that anybody would come along for the next week or so.”

“Mister, you’re a godsend, if ever there was one.  I’d write your name on the roster of saints in my prayer book, if I ever said prayers and had a prayer book and a pencil and knew what name to write.”

“Casey Ryan.  Don’t you worry, ma’am.  We’ll get you outa here in no time.”  Casey grinned and craned his neck.  Looking lower this time, he saw a pair of feet which did not seem to belong to that voice, though they were undoubtedly feminine.  Still, red mud will work miracles of disfigurement, and Casey was an optimist by nature.

“My wife is trying out a new comedy line,” the man observed unemotionally.  “Trouble is it never gets over, out front.  If she ever did get it across the footlights, I could raise the price of admission and get away with it.  How far is it to Rhyolite?”

“Rhyolite?  Twenty or twenty-five miles, mebby.”  Casey gave him an inquiring look.

“Can we get there in time to paper the town and hire a hall to show in, Mister?” Casey saw the mud-caked feet move laboriously toward the rear of the car.

“Yes, ma’am, I guess you can.  There ain’t any town, though, and it ain’t got any hall in it, nor anybody to go to a show.”

The woman laughed.  “That’s like my prayer book.  Well, Jack, you certainly have got a powerful eye, but you’ve been trying to Svengali this out-fit out of the mud for an hour, and I haven’t seen it move an inch, so far.  Let’s just try something else.”

“A prayer outa your prayer book, maybe,” her husband retorted, not troubling to move or turn his head.