“You ask anybody if it don’t!” he agreed sympathetically, mentally going over his rack of tires, not quite sure that he had four in that size, but hoping that he had five and that he could persuade the man to invest.  He surely needed rubber, thought Casey, as he scrutinized the two casings on the car.  He stood aside while the man backed, turned a wide half-circle and drove into the grateful shade of the garage.  It seemed cool in there after the blistering sunlight, unless one glanced at Casey’s thermometer which declared a hundred and nineteen with its inexorable red line.

“Whatcha got there?  Goats?” Casey’s eyes had left the wheels of the trucks and dwelt upon a trailer penned round and filled with uneasy animals.

“Yeah.  Twelve, not countin’ the little fellers.  And m’wife an’ six young ones all told.  Makes quite a drag on the ole boat.  Knocks thunder outa tires, too.  You say you got my size?  We-ell, I guess I got to have ’em, cost er no cost.”

“Sure you got to have ’em.  It’s worse ahead than what you been over, an’ if I was you I’d shoe ’er all round before I hit that lava stretch up ahead here.  You could keep them two fer extras in case of accident.  Might git some wear outa them when yuh strike good roads again, but they shore won’t go far in these rocks.  You ask anybody.”

“We-ell—­I guess mebby I better—­I don’t see how I’m goin’ to git along any other way, but—­”

Casey had gone to find where Juan had cached himself and to pluck that apathetic youth from slumber and set him to work.  Four casings and tubes for a two-ton truck run into money, as Casey was telling himself complacently.  He had not yet sold any tires for a two-ton truck, and he had just two fabrics and two cords, in trade vernacular.  He paid no further attention to the man, since there would be no bickering.  When a man has only two badly chewed tires, and four wheels, argument is superfluous.

So Casey mildly kicked Juan awake and after the garage jack, and himself wheeled out his four great pneumatic tires, and with his jackknife slit the wound paper covering, and wondered what it was that smelled so unpleasant.  A goat bleated plaintively to remind him of their presence.  Another goat carried on the theme, and the chorus swelled quaveringly and held to certain minor notes.  Within the closed truck a small child whimpered and then began to cry definitely at the top of its voice.

Casey looked up from bending over the fourth tire wrapping.  “Better let your folks git out and rest awhile,” he invited hospitably.  “It’s goin’ to take a little time to put these tires on.  I got some cold water back there—­help yourself.”

“Well, I’d kinda like to water them goats,” the man observed diffidently.  “They ain’t had a drop sence early yest-day mornin’.  You got water here, ain’t yuh?  An’ they might graze around a mite whilst we’re here.  Travelin’ like this, I try to kinda give ’em a chanct when we stop along the road.  It’s been an awful trip.  We come clear from Wyoming.  How far is it from here to San Jose, Californy?”