“‘Why, pard,’ says he, ’what’s the matter?  Do you feel pale?  Are you nervous?  It ain’t possible that you’re scared?  Honest, now, pard, if it weren’t that I knew you were a genuine gold-mounted hero I’d sure think you was a scared man.’

“I never said nothin’.  The scenery and me was just turnin’ the mark buoy on our fourth lap.

“‘Dear me, pard!’ continues Billings.  ’I sure hope I ain’t scared you none.  We come down a little slow this evenin’, but to-morrow night, when I take you back home, I’ll let the old girl out a little.’

“I sensed some of that.  And as the shanty had about come to anchor, I answered and spoke my mind.

“‘When you take me back home!’ I says.  ’When you do!  Why, you crack-brained, murderin’ lunatic, I wouldn’t cruise in that hell wagon of yours again for the skipper’s wages on a Cunarder.  No, nor the mate’s hove in!’

“And that shover he put his head back and laughed and laughed and laughed.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE CRUISE OF THE RED CAR

“I don’t wonder he laughed,” observed Wingate, who seemed to enjoy irritating his friend.  “You must have been good as a circus.”

“Humph!” grunted the depot master.  “If I remember right you said you wa’n’t any ten-cent side show under similar circumstances, Barzilla.  Heave ahead, Bailey!”

Captain Stitt, unruffled, resumed: 

“I tell you, I had to take it that evenin’,” he said.  “All the time I was cookin’ and while he was eatin’ supper, Billings was rubbin’ it into me about my bein’ scared.  Called me all the saltwater-hero names he could think of—­’Hobson’ and ‘Dewey’ and the like of that, usin’ em sarcastic, of course.  Finally, he said he remembered readin’ in school, when he was little, about a girl hero, name of Grace Darlin’.  Said he cal’lated, if I didn’t mind, he’d call me Grace, ’cause it was heroic and yet kind of fitted in with my partic’lar brand of bravery.  I didn’t answer much; he had me down, and I knew it.  Likewise I judged he was more or less out of his head; no sane man would yell the way he done aboard that automobile.

“Then he commenced to spin yarns about himself and his doin’s, and pretty soon it come out that he’d been a cowboy afore young Stumpton give up ranchin’ and took to automobilin’.  That cleared the sky line some, of course; I’d read consider’ble about cowboys in the ten-cent books my nephew fetched home when he was away to school.  I see right off that Billings was the livin’ image of Deadwood Dick and Wild Bill and the rest in them books; they yelled and howled and hadn’t no regard for life and property any more’n he had.  No, sir!  He wa’n’t no crazier’n they was; it was in the breed, I judged.

“‘I sure wish I had you on the ranch, Grace,’ says he.  ’Why don’t you come West some day?  That’s where a hero like you would show up strong.’