“The price of calico is high down here.”

“And goin’ up,” agreed Bill, gloomily.  He drove ten miles in silence while I, knowing my type, waited.

“That old Billings ought to be drug out and buried,” he remarked at last.  “We rode together on the Chiracahua range.  He ought to know better than to try to put it onto me.”

“???” said I.

“You saw that first bottle?  Just plain forty-rod dog poison—­and me payin’ three good round dollars!”

“For calico,” I reminded.

“Shore.  That’s why he done it.  He had me—­if I hadn’t called him.”

“But that first bottle was identically the same as the one you have in your pocket,” I stated.

“Shore?”

“Why, yes—­at least—­that is, the bottle and label were the same, and I particularly noticed the cork seal looked intact.”

“It was,” agreed Bill.  “That cap hasn’t never been disturbed.  You’re right.”

“Then what objection——­”

“It’s one of them wonders of modern science that spoils the simple life next to Nature’s heart,” said Bill, unexpectedly.  “You hitch a big hollow needle onto an electric light current.  When she gets hot enough you punch a hole with her in the bottom of the bottle.  Then you throw the switch and let the needle cool off.  When she’s cool you pour out the real thing for your own use—­mebbe.  Then you stick in your forty-cent-a-gallon squirrel poison.  Heat up your needle again.  Draw her out very slow so the glass will close up behind her.  Simple, neat, effective, honest enough for down here.  Cork still there, seal still there, label still there.  Bottle still there, except for a little bit of a wart-lookin’ bubble in the bottom.”

It was now in the noon hour.  Knowing cowboys of old I expected no lunch.  We racketed along, and our dust tried to catch us, and sleepy, accustomed jack rabbits made two perfunctory hops as we turned on them the battery of our exhaust.

We dipped down into a carved bottomland, several miles wide, filled with minarets, peaks, vermilion towers, and strange striped labyrinths of many colours above which the sky showed an unbelievable blue.  The trunks of colossal trees lay about in numbers.  Apparently they had all been cross-cut in sections like those sawed for shake bolts, for each was many times clearly divided.  The sections, however, lay all in place; so the trunks of the trees were as they had fallen.  About the ground were scattered fragments of rock of all sizes, like lava, but of all the colours of the giddiest parrots.  The tiniest piece had at least all the tints of the spectrum; and the biggest seemed to go the littlest several better.  They looked to me like beautiful jewels.  Bill cast at them a contemptuous glance.

“Every towerist I take in yere makes me stop while he sags down the car with this junk,” he said.  Whenever I say “Bill said” or “I said,” I imply that we shrieked, for always through that great, still country we hustled enveloped in a profanity of explosions, creaks, rattles, and hums.  Just now though, on a level, we travelled at a low gear.  “Petrified wood,” Bill added.