Casey blinked and looked again.  The woman who appeared from the farther side of the car might have been the creature of his dream, so far as her face, her hair and her voice went.  Her hair was yellow, unmistakably yellow.  Her eyes were bluer than Casey’s own, and she had nice teeth and showed them in a red-lipped smile.  A more sophisticated man would have known that the powder on her nose was freshly applied, and that her reason for remaining so long hidden from his sight while she talked to him was revealed in the moist color on her lips and the fresh bloom on her cheeks.  Casey was not sophisticated.  He thought she was a beautiful woman and asked no questions of her make-up box.

“Mister, you certainly are a godsend!” she gushed again when she faced him.  “I’d call you a direct answer to prayer, only I haven’t been praying.  I’ve been trying to tell Jack that the shovel is not packed under the banjos, as he thinks it was, but was left back at our last camp where he was trying to dig water out of a wet spot.  Jack, dear, perhaps the gentleman has got a shovel in his car.  Ain’t it a real gag, Mister, us being stuck out here in a dry lake?”

Casey touched his hat and grinned and tried not to look at her too long.  Husbands of beautiful young women are frequently jealous, and Casey knew his place and meant to keep it.

All the way back to his car Casey studied the peculiar features of the meeting.  He had been thinking about yellow-haired women—­well!  But of course, she was married, and therefore not to be thought of save as a coincidence; still, Casey rather regretted the existence of Jack dear, and began to wonder why good-looking women always picked such dried-up little runts for husbands.  “Show actors by the talk,” he mused.  “I wonder now if she don’t sing, mebby?”

He started the car and forged out to them, making the last few rods in low gear and knowing how risky it was to stop.  They were rather helpless, he had to admit, and did all the standing around while Casey did all the work.  But he shoveled the rear wheels out, waded back to the tiny island of solid ground and gathered an armful of brush, which he crowded in front of the wheels, covering himself with mud thereby; then he tied the tow rope he carried for emergencies like this, waded to the Ford, cranked and trusted the rest to luck.  The Ford moved slowly ahead until the rope between the two cars tightened, then spun her wheels and proceeded to dig herself in where she stood.  The other car, shaking with the tremor of its own engine, ruthlessly ground the sagebrush into the mud and stood upon it roaring and spluttering furiously.

“Nothing like sticking together, Mister,” called the lady cheerfully, and he heard her laughter above the churn of their motors.

“Say, ain’t your carburetor all off?” Casey leaned out to call back to the husband.  “You’re smokin’ back there like wet wood.”

The man immediately stopped the motor and looked behind him.