Speaking of the doctors, Rogers did not in the least complain about them. No, he spoke of them very calmly.

"It can't be helped. Tough luck!"

When some misfortune strikes an American he seldom tries to fathom the roots of the trouble that overwhelmed him. That is not in the American character. When things go well with him he will not say that anyone had been his benefactor. He himself earned the money with his own hands. When things go badly, however, he will not blame anyone either. He will say just as Rogers told us: " Tough luck!" or " Didn't turn out right with me. That means I didn't know how to do it." The doctors robbed Rogers. Yet, instead of contemplating whether that was just or unjust, he comforted himself with the thought that it was bad luck and with the hope that a year from now he would have good luck. At times, even a note left by a man who has committed suicide contains only the one primitive thought: "I had bad luck in life."

Rogers did not complain. Yet, within one year he had lost everything. His wife had become a cripple for life, his possessions and savings had been raided by medical robbers. He himself was standing at the side of the road begging strangers for a ride. The only thing he still had left was the uplifted thumb of his right hand.

In Phoenix he expected to receive eighteen dollars a week. He planned to live on six or seven dollars. The balance he proposed to spend on his wife's treatments. The poor woman still wants to work. She was thinking of teaching Latin at home. But who in Oklahoma City will] want to take Latin lessons at home? It was unlikely.

Smiling gloomily, Rogers again showed us the newspaper clipping. Under the photograph was the optimistic inscription:

"She knows that she is paralysed for life, yet she looks at the future with a smile. ' But my husband is with me,' said the poor woman when interviewed by our correspondent."

Mr. Adams suddenly seized Rogers's hand and shook it. "Good boy!" he muttered, and turned away. "Good boy!" Rogers put away the clipping and became silent. He seemed to be about twenty-eight years old, a self-possessed young man with a handsome, manly face and black eyes. His slight aquiline nose made him look a little Indian. Rogers soon explained to us that he was actually one-quarter Indian.

The devil take those Texans! They know how to herd cows and how to endure the blows of fate. Was it perchance the admixture of Indian blood that made our fellow traveller so stoically calm! A Frenchman or an Italian in his place would probably have fallen into religious madness, would have probably cursed God, while the American was calm. He was asked to tell about himself, so he told us.

And so we talked with him for several hours. We asked him a hundred questions, and we found out from him everything that one could possibly

find out. We naturally expected that he might want to find out something from us, too. That was the more to be expected since we talked among ourselves in Russian, a language which he had hardly heard in Texas. Would not the sound of this speech which he had never heard before arouse his interest in his interlocutors ? But he did not ask us anything, was not interested to know who we were, where we were going, what language we were speaking.

Surprised by such lack of curiosity, we asked him whether he knew anything about the Soviet Union, whether he had ever heard of it."Yes," said Rogers, "I heard about the Russians, but I don't know any-thing about them. Now, my wife reads newspapers, so she must know."

We understood then that he failed to question us not because he was unusually considerate. On the contrary, he was simply not interested, just as he was undoubtedly not interested in Mexico, which lay near by, or even in New York.

We stopped for lunch not far from Santa Rosa in a hamlet near a railway station baked by the sun. The proprietor of the establishment where we ate cheese sandwiches and canned ham sandwiches was a Mexican with a large bony nose. The sandwiches were made by him, by his wife, who did not know a word of English, and by his son, a thin boy with crooked cavalry legs and in a cowboy belt decorated with brass. The Mexican family was preparing sandwiches with much shouting and noise, as if they were dividing an estate. The sensible calm American service disappeared as if it had never existed. Besides, the charges for the sandwiches were twice their usual price. On the main street of the hamlet was a store of Indian goods. In its show window were handmade blankets, ornamented pots, and Indian gods with tremendous cylindrical noses. All this railroad wealth was illuminated by a hot November sun. This was not, however, the real heat of summer but a weakened, quite like a canned, kind of heat.

Some miles away from the hamlet through which we had but recently walked with the haughty manner of foreigners occurred our first automobile mishap. We very nearly landed in a ditch.

We will not say how it happened. At any rate, it was not any too elegant. Nor will we tell whose fault it was. We are, however, willing to guarantee that it was neither Mrs. Adams's fault nor her husband's, We can plead only one thing in our own defence: when the machine began to swerve into the ditch, neither of us raised his hands to heaven nor bade farewell to his near ones and his friends. Each behaved as he should have. We maintained a profound silence, curious to see when the machine would land.

The automobile did not turn over, however. Bent badly, it stopped on the very edge. We crept out gingerly, scarcely able to maintain our balance (including our spiritual balance).

We scarcely had the time to exchange one word about what happened to us when the first machine that passed by (it happened to be a truck) stopped, and a man with a fine new rope in his hand jumped out of it.

Without saying a word, he tied one end of the rope to the truck, the other to our machine, and in no time he pulled us back to the road. All passing automobilists stopped and asked if we needed their help. In a word, the rescuers flung themselves upon us like birds of prey. Every second new brakes screeched and a new passer-by offered his services.

It was a touching spectacle. The automobiles assembled around us without any prearrangement, just as ants do, when they see a fellow in trouble. Word of honour, we were even glad that: we had this small accident, otherwise we would never have discovered this amazing American trait. Only after learning that their help was not needed did the automobilists proceed.

Our rescuer wished us a happy journey and drove off. Before going, in farewell, he glanced at Mrs. Adams and barked out something to the effect that a man should drive a car rather than a woman. Mrs. Adams behaved like a perfect lady. She did not even venture to say that on that occasion she had not been driving the car.

The American who had pulled us back to the road did not even care to listen to our thanks. Help on the road is not regarded in America as any special virtue. If our rescuer himself had got into trouble, he would have been helped just as quickly and silently as he had helped us. You cannot even mention an offer of money for such help, or you would be rebuked for it.

Two days later we ourselves appeared in the role of rescuers.

We were returning along the mountain road into Santa Fe from an Indian village near the town of Taos. A wet snow fell. The road was icy, Now and then our automobile took precarious turns of its own free will, bringing us to the very edge of the road. We drove slowly. We did not feel any too easy in our hearts.

Suddenly from around a bend we saw across the road a small truck lying on its side. Near it in complete bewilderment wandered a young Mexican. We could see from afar that he was a Mexican. He wore a pink shirt, a blue necktie, a grey vest, raspberry shoes, green socks, and a dark violet hat. Two paces from him, on a slope, his back in a pool of blood, lay