* * * * *

“Which is all very good,” Davies observed to Wemple as they approached Panuco, “except for the fact that the road on the other side was never built for automobiles, much less for a long-bodied one like this.  I wish it were the Four instead of the Six.”

“And it would bother you with a Four to negotiate that hill at Aliso where the road switchbacks above the river.”

“And we’re going to do it with a Six or lose a perfectly good Six in trying,” Beth Drexel laughed to them.

Avoiding the cavalry camp, they entered Panuco with all the speed the ruts permitted, swinging dizzy corners to the squawking of chickens and barking of dogs.  To gain the ferry, they had to pass down one side of the great plaza which was the heart of the city.  Peon soldiers, drowsing in the sun or clustering around the cantinas, stared stupidly at them as they flashed past.  Then a drunken major shouted a challenge from the doorway of a cantina and began vociferating orders, and as they left the plaza behind they could hear rising the familiar mob-cry “Kill the Gringoes!”

“If any shooting begins, you women get down in the bottom of the car,” Davies commanded.  “And there’s the ferry all right.  Be careful, Charley.”

The machine plunged directly down the bank through a cut so deep that it was more like a chute, struck the gangplank with a terrific bump, and seemed fairly to leap on board.  The ferry was scarcely longer than the machine, and Drexel, visibly shaken by the closeness of the shave, managed to stop only when six inches remained between the front wheels and overboard.

It was a cable ferry, operated by gasoline, and, while Wemple cast off the mooring lines, Davies was making swift acquaintance with the engine.  The third turn-over started it, and he threw it into gear with the windlass that began winding up the cable from the river’s bottom.

By the time they were in midstream a score of horsemen rode out on the bank they had just left and opened a scattering fire.  The party crowded in the shelter of the car and listened to the occasional richochet of a bullet.  Once, only, the car was struck.

“Here!—­what are you up to!” Wemple demanded suddenly of Drexel, who had exposed himself to fish a rifle out of the car.

“Going to show the skunks what shooting is,” was his answer.

“No, you don’t,” Wemple said.  “We’re not here to fight, but to get this party to Tampico.”  He remembered Peter Tonsburg’s remark.  “Whose business is to live, Charley—­that’s our business.  Anybody can get killed.  It’s too easy these days.”

Still under fire, they moored at the north shore, and when Davies had tossed overboard the igniter from the ferry engine and commandeered ten gallons of its surplus gasoline, they took the steep, soft road up the bank in a rush.

“Look at her climb,” Drexel uttered gleefully.  “That Aliso hill won’t bother us at all.  She’ll put a crimp in it, that’s what she’ll do.”