Mr. Elder wiped his brow.

Dave Dyer added, “Sure!  You bet!  What they ought to do is simply to hang every one of these agitators, and that would settle the whole thing right off.  Don’t you think so, doc?”

“You bet,” agreed Kennicott.

The conversation was at last relieved of the plague of Carol’s intrusions and they settled down to the question of whether the justice of the peace had sent that hobo drunk to jail for ten days or twelve.  It was a matter not readily determined.  Then Dave Dyer communicated his carefree adventures on the gipsy trail: 

“Yep.  I get good time out of the flivver.  ’Bout a week ago I motored down to New Wurttemberg.  That’s forty-three——­No, let’s see:  It’s seventeen miles to Belldale, and ’bout six and three-quarters, call it seven, to Torgenquist, and it’s a good nineteen miles from there to New Wurttemberg—­seventeen and seven and nineteen, that makes, uh, let me see:  seventeen and seven ’s twenty-four, plus nineteen, well say plus twenty, that makes forty-four, well anyway, say about forty-three or -four miles from here to New Wurttemberg.  We got started about seven-fifteen, prob’ly seven-twenty, because I had to stop and fill the radiator, and we ran along, just keeping up a good steady gait——­”

Mr. Dyer did finally, for reasons and purposes admitted and justified, attain to New Wurttemberg.

Once—­only once—­the presence of the alien Carol was recognized.  Chet Dashaway leaned over and said asthmatically, “Say, uh, have you been reading this serial ‘Two Out’ in Tingling Tales?  Corking yarn!  Gosh, the fellow that wrote it certainly can sling baseball slang!”

The others tried to look literary.  Harry Haydock offered, “Juanita is a great hand for reading high-class stuff, like ‘Mid the Magnolias’ by this Sara Hetwiggin Butts, and ‘Riders of Ranch Reckless.’  Books.  But me,” he glanced about importantly, as one convinced that no other hero had ever been in so strange a plight, “I’m so darn busy I don’t have much time to read.”

“I never read anything I can’t check against,” said Sam Clark.

Thus ended the literary portion of the conversation, and for seven minutes Jackson Elder outlined reasons for believing that the pike-fishing was better on the west shore of Lake Minniemashie than on the east—­though it was indeed quite true that on the east shore Nat Hicks had caught a pike altogether admirable.

The talk went on.  It did go on!  Their voices were monotonous, thick, emphatic.  They were harshly pompous, like men in the smoking-compartments of Pullman cars.  They did not bore Carol.  They frightened her.  She panted, “They will be cordial to me, because my man belongs to their tribe.  God help me if I were an outsider!”