On the third day, a big man with a black sombrero came in with the sheriff. He said to me, “You Peter B. Smith?”

“Yes.”

“I’m from Yuma,” he said. “You’re going back with me.”

“Not without extradition.”

“I have extradition.”

“Well, I refuse to honor it. I’m going to stay right here.”

He grinned.

I gripped the side of the cot and raised my voice. “I’m going to stay right here!”

The big man sighed. “Listen,” he said, “it’s too God damn hot for strenuous exercise. For Christ’s sake, come on out and get in that car.”

I yelled at him, “I’m going to stay right here!”

He shoved me around. The Arizona officer snapped handcuffs on my wrists. I refused to talk, and they hauled me out of the jail and into the car.

The big man put on a leg iron. “You asked for this,” he said, mopping perspiration from his forehead. “Why can’t you be reasonable? Don’t you know it’s hot?”

“You’re going to regret this as long as you live,” I said. “I haven’t committed any crime and you can’t pin one on me. I’ll—”

“Forget it. Shut up,” he interrupted. “I’ve got a hot drive across the desert ahead of me, and I don’t want to hear the sound of your voice.”

“You won’t,” I said, and sat back against the cushions.

We drove through the shimmering heat of the desert. The horizon twisted and danced in the rays of a blistering sun. The air was so hot it cooked my eyes in their sockets as boiling water boils an egg in its shell. The tires seemed to stick to the road, snarling a steady whine of sticky protest.

“You would come at the hottest time of the day,” I said.

“Shut up.”

I kept quiet.

We drove into Yuma and went to the courthouse. The deputy district attorney said, “You made these people go to a lot of trouble, Smith. Where do you think it’s going to get you?”

“They didn’t need to go to any trouble,” I said. “If they think they’ve had trouble so far, wait until you see what they get.”

“What are they going to get?”

“I’m going to sue them for malicious prosecution, false arrest, and defamation of character.”

He yawned and said, “Don’t pull that gag. You make me laugh. If it had been a new car, the situation would have been different. As it is, it’s a demonstrator. You’ve given it a few miles’ run. It hasn’t hurt the car any. But you made them go to the expense of extraditing you. That’s going to hurt.”

“Why the hell didn’t they cash the check I gave them?” I asked.

He laughed and said, “Because you’d been down to the bank and drawn all the money out.”