Just as I got to my knees, there was again the sound of the fence stretching, and I had time only to start taking my kneeling posture seriously. This time no wire came whipping into the truck.

We were back on the road. I regained my squatting position behind the truck cab's rear window. Johnson's left hand was pressed against the side of his head, red cheeks whitening beneath his fingers.

``Tee-wah,'' the driver cackled, his black eyes glittering behind dull silver chicken fencing. ``That was Tee-wah I was talking. You thought I was a Mexican, didn't you, buddy?''

I nodded.

``Hell, that's all right, buddy,'' the Indian (I now guessed) said. ``Drink your beer.''

Miraculously, the bottle was still in my hand, foam still geysering over my (luckily) waterproof watch. No sooner had I started drinking than the driver started zigzagging the truck. The beer foamed furiously. I drank furiously. A long time. Emptied the bottle.

Teeth again flashing back at me, the driver released a deluge of Spanish in which ``amigo'' appeared every so often like an island in the stormy waves of surrounding sound. I bobbed my head each time it appeared.

Suddenly the Spanish became an English in which only one word emerged with clarity and precision, ``son of a bitch,'' sometimes hyphenated by vicious jabs of a beer bottle into Johnson's quivering ribs.

A big car was approaching, its chrome teeth grinning. Beyond it the gray road stretched a long, long way. The car was just about to us, its driver's fat, solemn face intent on the road ahead, on business, on a family in Sante Fe -- on anything but an old pick-up truck in which two human beings desperately needed rescue.