"She didn't see no joke in that, so the boss he fired us. He wasn't goin' to pay us at that, but I picks up the little picture-machine box and I swings her up over the track kind of suggestive like. 'One!' said I. 'Do we get our money?'
"'Drop that machine!' says he, rushin' up to me.
"'I'm a-goin' to,' says I, 'good and hard. Think again, while I count. Do we get our money?'
"'Two,' says I, and I swings the box up by the legs.
"'Hole on!' yells the boss. 'Pay the mutt, Jimmy, and, for Gord sake, get that machine before he ruins the best reel we made yet!'
"But the bell and Moonstone Cañon?" questioned Louise, glancing back at Boyar grazing down the meadow.
"Sure! Well, we flopped near here that night--"
"Uhuh. Let's see, you ain't hep to that, are you? Why, we crawled to the hay, hit the feathers, pounded our ear--er--went to bed! That's what it used to be. Well, in the morning, me and Collie got some sardines and crackers to the store and a little coffee. It was goin' over there that we seen the bell and the road and the whole works. I got kind of interested myself in that cañon. I never saw so many moonstones layin' right on top the gravel, and I been in Mex., too. We liked it and we stayed over last night, expectin' to be gone by now."
"And when you leave here?" queried Louise.
"Same old thing," replied Overland cheerfully. "I know the ropes. Collie works by spells. Oh, we're livin', and that's all you need to do in California."
"And that is all--now that you have found the road?"
"Oh, the road is like all of them dreams," said Overland. "Such things are good for keepin' people interested in somethin' till it's done, that's all. It was fun at first, lookin' up every arroyo and slit in the hills, till we found it. Same as them marriages on the desert, after that."
"Uhuh. Seein' water what ain't there, like."
"Oh, mirages!" And Louise laughed joyfully.
"I don't see no joke," said Overland, aggrieved.
"That's all right, Miss. But what would you call it?"
"Oh, an illusion, a mirage, something that seems to be, but that is not."
"I don't see where it's got anything on marriages, then, do you? But I ain't generally peppermistic. I believe in folks and things, although I'm old enough to know better."