``No, I don't,'' Johnson said. ``I'm a good Baptist, and drinking & & &.''

Mrs. Roebuck very kindly let me drive through Sante Fe to a road which would, she said, lead us to Taos and then Raton and ``eventshahleh'' out of New Mexico. How lightly her ``eventshah-leh'' passed into the crannies where I was storing dialect material for some vaguely dreamed opus, and how the word would echo. And re-echo.

Hardly had Mrs. Roebuck driven off when a rusty pick-up truck, father or grandfather of Senor ``Moriarty's'' Ford sedan, came screeching to a dust swirling stop, and a brown face appeared, its nose threatened by shards of what had once been the side window.

``Get in, buddies. Get in.'' The straight, black hair flopped in a vigorous nod, the slender nose plunged toward glass teeth and drew safely back.

Johnson unwired the right hand door, whose window was, like the left one, merely loosely taped fragments of glass, and Johnson wadded himself into a narrow seat made still more narrow by three cases of beer.

``In back, buddy,'' the driver said to me.

Quickly but carefully lowering my duffel bag over the low side rack, I stepped on the running board; it flopped down, sprang back up and gouged my shin. The truck was hurtling forward. I seized the rack and made a western style flying mount just in time, one of my knees mercifully landing on my duffel bag -- and merely wrecking my camera, I was to discover later -- my other knee landing on the slivery truck floor boards and -- but this is no medical report.