Ah, 'tis far heaven my awed heart seeksWhen I behold those mighty peaks.
Ah, 'tis far heaven my awed heart seeksWhen I behold those mighty peaks.
Milt could hear him commenting, "Doesn't that just get the feeling of the great open, Miss Boltwood?"
Milt did not catch her answer. Himself, he grunted, "I never could get much het up about this poetry that's full of Ah's and 'tises."
Claire must have seen Milt just after he had sauntered past. She cried, "Oh, Mr. Daggett! Just a moment!" She left Breeches, ran down to Milt. He was frightened. Was he going to get what he deserved for eavesdropping?
She was almost whispering. "Save me from our friend up on the porch," she implored.
He couldn't believe it. But he took a chance. "Won't you have a little walk?" he roared.
"So nice of you—just a little way, perhaps?" she sang out.
They were silent till he got up the nerve to admire, "Glad you found some people you knew in the hotel."
"But I didn't."
"Oh, I thought your friend in the riding-pants was chummy."
"So did I!" She rather snorted.
"Well, he's a nice-looking lad. I did admire those pants. I never could wear anything like that."
"I should hope not—at dinner! The creepy jack-ass, I don't believe he's ever been on a horse in his life! He thinks riding-breeches are the——"
"Oh, that's it. Breeches, not pants."
"—last word in smartness. Overdressing is just ten degrees worse than underdressing."
"Oh, I don't know. Take this sloppy old blue suit of mine——"
"It's perfectly nice and simple, and quite well cut. You probably had a clever tailor."
"I had. He lives in Chicago or New York, I believe."
"Really? How did he come to Schoenstrom?"
"Never been there. This tailor is a busy boy. He fitted about eleventeen thousand people, last year."
"I see. Ready mades. Cheer up. That's where Henry B. Boltwood gets most of his clothes. Mr. Daggett, if ever I catch you in the Aren't-I-beautiful frame of mind of our friend back on the porch, I'll give up my trip to struggle for your soul."
"He seemed to have soul in large chunks. He seemed to talk pretty painlessly. I had a hunch you and he were discussing sculpture, anyway. Maybe Rodin."
"What do you know about Rodin?"
"Articles in the magazines. Same place you learned about him!" But Milt did not sound rude. He said it chucklingly.
"You're perfectly right. And we've probably read the very same articles. Well, our friend back there said to me at dinner, 'It must be dreadful for you to have to encounter so many common people along the road.' I said, 'It is,' in the most insulting tone I could, and he just rolled his eyes, and hadn't an idea I meant him. Then he slickered his hair at me, and mooed, 'Is it not wonderful to see all these strange manifestations of the secrets of Nature!' and I said, 'Is it?' and he went on, 'One feels that if one could but meet a sympathetic lady here, one's cup of rejoicing in untrammeled nature——' Honest, Milt, Mr. Daggett, I mean, he did talk like that. Been reading books by optimistic lady authors. And one looked at me, one did, as if one would be willing to hold my hand, if I let one.
"He invited me to come out on the porch and give the double O. to handsome mountains as illuminated by terrestrial bodies, and I felt so weak in the presence of his conceit that I couldn't refuse. Then he insistedon introducing me to a woman from my own Brooklyn, who condoled with me for having to talk to Western persons while motoring. Oh, dear God, that such people should live ... that the sniffy little Claire should once have been permitted to live!... And then I saw you!"
Through all her tirade they had stood close together, her face visibly eager in the glow from the hotel; and Milt had grown taller. But he responded, "I'm afraid I might have been just as bad. I haven't even reached the riding-breeches stage in evolution. Maybe never will."
"No. You won't. You'll go right through it. By and by, when you're so rich that father and I won't be allowed to associate with you, you'll wear riding-breeches—but for riding, not as a donation to the beauties of nature."
"Oh, I'm already rich. It shows. Waitress down at the camp asked me whose car I was driving through."
"I know what I wanted to say. Since you won't be our guest, will you be our host—I mean, as far as welcoming us? I think it would be fun for father and me to stop at your camp, tomorrow night, at the canyon, instead of at the hotel. Will you guide me to the canyon, if I do?"
"Oh—terribly—glad!"
Neitherof the Boltwoods had seen the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. The Canyon of the Yellowstone was their first revelation of intimidating depth and color gone mad. When their car and Milt's had been parked in the palisaded corral back of the camp at which they were to stay, they three set out for the canyon's edge chattering, and stopped dumb.
Mr. Boltwood declined to descend. He returned to the camp for a cigar. The boy and girl crept down seeming miles of damp steps to an outhanging pinnacle that still was miles of empty airy drop above the river bed. Claire had a quaking feeling that this rock pulpit was going to slide. She thrust out her hand, seized Milt's paw, and in its firm warmth found comfort. Clinging to its security she followed him by the crawling path to the river below. She looked up at columns of crimson and saffron and burning brown, up at the matronly falls, up at lone pines clinging to jutting rocks that must be already crashing toward her, and in the splendor she knew the Panic fear that is the deepest reaction to beauty.
Milt merely shook his head as he stared up. He had neither gossiped nor coyly squeezed her hand as he had guided her. She fell to thinking that she preferred this American boy in this American scene to a nimble gentleman saluting the Alps in a dinky green hat with a little feather.
It was Milt who, when they had labored back up again, when they had sat smiling at each other with comfortable weariness, made her see the canyon not as a freak, but as the miraculous work of a stream rolling grains of sand for millions of years, till it had cut this Jovian intaglio. He seemed to have read—whether in books, or in paragraphs in mechanical magazines—a good deal about geology. He made it real. Not that she paid much attention to what he actually said! She was too busy thinking of the fact that he should say it at all.
Not condescendingly but very companionably she accompanied Milt in the exploration of their camp for the night—the big dining tent, the city of individual bedroom tents, canvas-sided and wooden-floored, each with a tiny stove for the cold mornings of these high altitudes. She was awed that evening by hearing her waitress discussing the novels of Ibanez. Jeff Saxton knew the names of at least six Russian novelists, but Jeff was not highly authoritative regarding Spanish literature.
"I suppose she's a school-teacher, working here invacation," Claire whispered to Milt, beside her at the long, busy, scenically conversational table.
"Our waitress? Well, sort of. I understand she's professor of literature in some college," said Milt, in a matter of fact way. And he didn't at all see the sequence when she went on:
"There is an America! I'm glad I've found it!"
The camp's evening bonfire was made of logs on end about a stake of iron. As the logs blazed up, the guests on the circle of benches crooned "Suwanee River," and "Old Black Joe," and Claire crooned with them. She had been afraid that her father would be bored, but she saw that, above his carefully tended cigar, he was dreaming. She wondered if there had been a time when he had hummed old songs.
The fire sank to coals. The crowd wandered off to their tents. Mr. Boltwood followed them after an apologetic, "Good night. Don't stay up too late." With a scattering of only half a dozen people on the benches, this huge circle seemed deserted; and Claire and Milt, leaning forward, chins on hands, were alone—by their own campfire, among the mountains.
The stars stooped down to the hills; the pines were a wall of blackness; a coyote yammered to point the stillness; and the mighty pile of coals gave a warmth luxurious in the creeping mountain chill.
The silence of large places awes the brisk intruder, and Claire's voice was unconsciously lowered as shebegged, "Tell me something about yourself, Mr. Daggett. I don't really know anything at all."
"Oh, you wouldn't be interested. Just Schoenstrom!"
"But just Schoenstrom might be extremely interesting."
"But honest, you'd think I was—edging in on you!"
"I know what you are thinking. The time I suggested, way back there in Dakota, that you were sticking too close. You've never got over it. I've tried to make up for it, but—— I really don't blame you. I was horrid. I deserve being beaten. But you do keep on punishing ra——"
"Punishing? Lord, I didn't mean to! No! Honest! It was nothing. You were right. Looked as though I was inviting myself—— But, oh, pleassssse, Miss Boltwood, don't ever think for a sec. that I meant to be a grouch——"
"Then do tell me—— Who is this Milton Daggett that you know so much better than I ever can?"
"Well," Milt crossed his knees, caught his chin in his hand, "I don't know as I really do know him so well. I thought I did. I was onto his evil ways. He was the son of the pioneer doctor, Maine folks."
"Really? My mother came from Maine."
Milt did not try to find out that they were cousins. He went on, "This kid, Milt, went to high school inSt. Cloud—town twenty times as big as Schoenstrom—but he drifted back because his dad was old and needed him, after his mother's death——"
"You have no brothers or sisters?"
"No. Nobody. 'Cept Lady Vere de Vere—which animal she is going to get cuffed if she chews up any more of my overcoat out in my tent tonight!... Well, this kid worked 'round, machinery mostly, and got interested in cars, and started a garage—— Wee, that was an awful shop, first one I had! In Rauskukle's barn. Six wrenches and a screwdriver and a one-lung pump! And I didn't know a roller-bearing from three-point suspension! But—— Well, anyway, he worked along, and built a regular garage, and paid off practically all the mortgage on it——"
"I remember stopping at a garage in Schoenstrom, I'm almost sure it was, for something. I seem to remember it was a good place. Do you own it? Really?"
"Ye-es, what there is of it."
"But there's a great deal of it. It's efficient. You've done your job. That's more than most high-born aides-de-camp could say."
"Honestly? Well—I don't know——"
"Who did you play with in Schoenstrom? Oh, IwishI'd noticed that town. But I couldn't tell then that—— What, uh, which girl did you fall in love with?"
"None! Honest! None! Not one! Never fell in love——"
"You're unfortunate. I have, lots of times. I remember quite enjoying being kissed once, at a dance."
When he answered, his voice was strange: "I suppose you're engaged to somebody."
"No. And I don't know that I shall be. Once, I thought I liked a man, rather. He has nice eyes and the most correct spectacles, and he is polite to his mother at breakfast, and his name is Jeff, and he will undoubtedly be worth five or six hundred thousand dollars, some day, and his opinions on George Moore and commercial paper are equally sound and unoriginal—— Oh, I ought not to speak of him, and I certainly ought not to be spiteful. I'm not at all reticent and ladylike, am I! But—— Somehow I can't see him out here, against a mountain of jagged rock."
"Only you won't always be out here against mountains. Some day you'll be back in—where is it in New York State?"
"I confess it's Brooklyn—but not what you'd mean by Brooklyn. Your remark shows you to have subtlety. I must remember that, mustn't I! I won't always be driving through this big land. But—— Will I get all fussy and ribbon-tied again, when I go back?"
"No. You won't. You drive like a man."
"What has that——"
"It has a lot to do with it. A garage man can trail along behind another car and figger out, figure out, just about what kind of a person the driver is from the way he handles his boat. Now you bite into the job. You drive pretty neat—neatly. You don't either scoot too far out of the road in passing a car, or take corners too wide. You won't be fussy. But still, I suppose you'll be glad to be back among your own folks and you'll forget the wild Milt that tagged along——"
"Milt—or Mr. Daggett—no, Milt! I shall never, in my oldest grayest year, in a ducky cap by the fireplace, forget the half-second when your hand came flashing along, and caught that man on the running-board. But it wasn't just that melodrama. If that hadn't happened, something else would have, to symbolize you. It's that you—oh, you took me in, a stranger, and watched over me, and taught me the customs of the country, and were never impatient. No, I shan't forget that; neither of the Boltwoods will."
In the rose-haze of firelight he straightened up and stared at her, but he settled into shyness again as she added:
"Perhaps others would have done the same thing. I don't know. If they had, I should have remembered them too. But it happened that it was you, and I, uh, my father and I, will always be grateful. We both hope we may see you in Seattle. What are you planningto do there? What is your ambition? Or is that a rude question?"
"Why, uh——"
"What I mean—— I mean, how did you happen to want to go there, with a garage at home? You still control it?"
"Oh yes. Left my mechanic in charge. Why, I just kind of decided suddenly. I guess it was what they call an inspiration. Always wanted a long trip, anyway, and I thought maybe in Seattle I could hook up with something a little peppier than Schoenstrom. Maybe something in Alaska. Always wished I were a mechanical or civil engineer so——"
"Then why don't you become one? You're young—— How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
"We're both children, compared with Je—compared with some men who are my friends. You're quite young enough to go to engineering school. And take some academic courses on the side—English, so on. Why don't you? Have you ever thought of it?"
"N-no, I hadn't thought of doing it, but—— All right. I will! In Seattle! B'lieve the University of Washington is there."
"You mean it?"
"Yes. I do. You're the boss."
"That's—that's flattering, but—— Do you always make up your mind as quickly as this?"
"When the boss gives orders!"
He smiled, and she smiled back, but this time it was she who was embarrassed. "You're rather overwhelming. You change your life—if you really do mean it—because ajeune fillefrom Brooklyn is so impertinent, from her Olympian height of finishing-school learning, as to suggest that you do so."
"I don't know what ajeune filleis, but I do know——" He sprang up. He did not look at her. He paraded back and forth, three steps to the right, three to the left, his hands in his pockets, his voice impersonal. "I know you're the finest person I ever met. You're the kind—I knew there must be people like you, because I knew the Joneses. They're the only friends I've got that have, oh, I suppose it's what they call culture."
In a long monologue, uninterrupted by Claire, he told of his affection for the Schoenstrom "prof" and his wife. The practical, slangy Milt of the garage was lost in the enthusiastic undergraduate adoring his instructor in the university that exists as veritably in a teacher's or a doctor's sitting-room in every Schoenstrom as it does in certain lugubrious stone hulks recognized by a state legislature as magically empowered to paste on sacred labels lettered "Bachelor of Arts."
He broke from his revelations to plump down on the bench beside her, to slap his palm with his fist,and sigh, "Lord, I've been gassing on! Guess I bored you!"
"Oh, please, Milt, please! I see it all so—— It must have been wonderful, the evening when Mrs. Jones read Noyes's 'Highwayman' aloud. Tell me—long before that—were you terribly lonely as a little boy?"
Now Milt had not been a terribly lonely little boy. He had been a leader in a gang devoted to fighting, swimming, pickerel-spearing, beggie-stealing, and catching rides on freights.
But he believed that he was accurately presenting every afternoon of his childhood, as he mused, "Yes, I guess I was, pretty much. I remember I used to sit on dad's doorstep, all those long sleepy summer afternoons, and I'd think, 'Aw, geeeeee, I—wisht—I—had—somebody—to—play—with!' I always wanted to make-b'lieve Robin Hood, but none of the other kids—so many of them were German; they didn't know about Robin Hood; so I used to scout off alone."
"If I could only have been there, to be Maid Marian for you! We'd have learned archery! Lonely little boy on the doorstep!" Her fingers just touched his sleeve. In her gesture, the ember-light caught the crystal of her wrist watch. She stooped to peer at it, and her pitying tenderness broke off in an agitated: "Heavings! Is it that late? To bed! Good night, Milt."
"Good night, Cl—— Miss Boltwood."
"No. 'Claire,' of course. I'm not normally a first-name-snatcher, but I do seem to have fallen into saying 'Milt.' Night!"
As she undressed, in her tent, Claire reflected, "He won't take advantage of my being friendly, will he? Only thing is—— I sha'n't dare to look at Henry B. when Milt calls me 'Claire' in that sedate Brooklyn Heights presence. The dear lamb! Lonely afternoons——!"
Theymet in the frost-shimmering mountain morning, on their way to the corral, to get their cars ready before breakfast. They were shy, hence they were boisterous, and tremendously unreferential to campfire confidences, and informative about distilled water for batteries, and the price of gas in the Park. On Milt's shoulder rode Vere de Vere who, in her original way, relieved one pause by observing "Mrwr."
They came in through the corral gate before any of the other motor tourists had appeared—and they stupidly halted to watch a bear, a large, black, adipose and extremely unchained bear, stalk along the line of cars, sniff, cock an ear at the Gomez, lumber up on its running-board, and bundle into the seat. His stern filled the space between side and top, and he was to be heard snuffing.
"Oh! Look! Milt! Left box of candy on seat—— Oh, please drive him away!"
"Me? Drive—that?"
"Frighten him away. Aren't animals afraid human eye——"
"Not in this park. Guns forbidden. Animals protected by U. S. Army, President, Congress, SupremeCourt, Department of Interior, Monroe Doctrine, W. C. T. U. But I'll try—cautiously."
"Don't you want me think you're hero?"
"Ye-es, providin' I don't have to go and be one."
They edged toward the car. The bear flapped his hind legs, looked out at the intruders, said "Oofflll!" and returned to the candy.
"Shoo!" Milt answered politely.
"Llooffll!"
From his own bug, beside the Gomez, Milt got a tool kit, and with considerable brilliance as a pitcher he sent a series of wrenches at the agitated stern of the bear. They offended the dignity of the ward of the Government. He finished the cover and ribbons of the candy box, and started for Milt ... who proceeded with haste toward Claire ... who was already at the gate.
Lady Vere de Vere, cat of a thousand battles, gave one frightful squawl, shot from Milt's shoulder and at the bear, claws out, fur electric. The bear carelessly batted once with its paw, and the cat sailed into the air. The satisfied bear strolled to the fence, shinned up it and over.
"Good old Vere! That wallop must of darn near stunned her, though!" Milt laughed to Claire, as they trotted back into the corral. The cat did not move, as they came up; did not give the gallant "Mrwr" with which she had saluted Milt on lonely morningafter morning of forlorn driving behind the Gomez. He picked Vere up.
"She's—she's dead," he said. He was crying.
"Oh, Milt—— Last night you said Vere was all the family you had. You have the Boltwoods, now!"
She did not touch his hand, nor did they speak as they walked soberly to the far side of the corral, and buried Lady Vere de Vere. At breakfast they talked of the coming day's run, from the canyon out of the Park, and northward. But they had the queer, quick casualness of intimates.
It was at breakfast that her father heard one Milt Daggett address the daughter of the Boltwoods as "Claire." The father was surprised into clearing his throat, and attacking his oatmeal with a zealousness unnatural in a man who regarded breakfast-foods as moral rather than interesting.
While he was lighting a cigar, and Claire was paying the bill, Mr. Boltwood stalked Milt, cleared his throat all over again, and said, "Nice morning."
It was the first time the two men had talked unchaperoned by Claire.
"Yes. We ought to have a good run, sir." The "sir" came hard. The historian puts forth a theory that Milt had got it out of fiction. "We might go up over Mount Washburn. Take us up to ten thousand feet."
"Uh, you said—didn't Miss Boltwood tell me that you are going to Seattle, too?"
"Yes."
"Friends there, no doubt?"
Milt grinned irresistibly. "Not a friend. But I'm going to make 'em. I'm going to take up engineering, and some French, I guess, at the university there."
"Ah. Really?"
"Yes. Been too limited in my ambition. Don't see why I shouldn't get out and build railroads and power plants and roads—Siberia, Africa, all sorts of interesting places."
"Quite right. Quite right. Uh, ah, I, oh, I—— Have you seen Miss Boltwood?"
"I saw Miss Boltwood in the office."
"Oh yes. Quite so. Uh—ah, here she is."
When the Gomez had started, Mr. Boltwood skirmished, "This young man—— Do you think you better let him call you by your Christian name?"
"Why not? I call him 'Milt.' 'Mr. Daggett' is too long a handle to use when a man is constantly rescuing you from the perils of the deep or hoboes or bears or something. Oh, I haven't told you. Poor old Milt, his cat was killed——"
"Yes, yes, dolly, you may tell me about that in due time, but let's stick to this social problem for a moment. Do you think you ought to be too intimate with him?"
"He's only too self-respecting. He wouldn't take advantage——"
"I'm quite aware of that. I'm not speaking on your behalf, but on his. I'm sure he's a very amiable chap, and ambitious. In fact—— Did you know that he has saved up money to attend a university?"
"When did he tell you that? How long has he been planning—— I thought that I——"
"Just this morning; just now."
"Oh! I'm relieved."
"I don't quite follow you, dolly, but—— Where was I? Do you realize what a demure tyrant you are? If you can drag me from New York to the aboriginal wilds, and I didnotlike that oatmeal, what will you do to this innocent? I want to protect him!"
"You better! Because I'm going to carve him, and paint him, and possibly spoil him. The creating of a man—of one who knows how to handle life—is so much more wonderful than creating absurd pictures or statues or stories. I'll nag him into completing college. He'll learn dignity—or perhaps lose his simplicity and be ruined; and then I'll marry him off to some nice well-bred pink-face, like Jeff Saxton's pretty cousin—who may turn him into a beastly money-grubber; and I'm monkeying with destiny, and I ought to be slapped, and I realize it, and I can't help it, and all my latent instinct as a feminine meddler is aroused, and—golly, I almost went off that curve!"
Thatwas the one black day of her voyage—black stippled with crimson.
It began with the bear's invasion of the car, resulting in long claw-marks across the upholstery, the loss of some particularly good candy bought at a Park hotel, and genuine grief abiding after the sentimental tragedy of Vere de Vere's death. The next act was the ingenious loss of all power of her engine. She forgot that, before breakfast, Milt had filled the oil-well for her. When she stopped for gasoline, and the seller inquired, "Quart of oil?"—she absently nodded. So the cylinders filled with surplus oil, the spark-plugs were fouled, and the engine had the power of a sewing machine.
She could not make Mount Washburn—she could not make even the slopes of the lower road. Now she knew the agony of the feeble car in the mountains—most shameful and anxious of a driver's dolors: the brisk start up the hill, the belief that you will keep on going this time; the feeling of weariness through all the car; the mad shifting of gears, the slipping of the clutch, and more gas, and less gas, and wondering whether more gas or less is the better, and the appallingknocking when you finally give her a lot too much gas; the remembrance, when it's too late, to retard the spark; the safe crawling up to the last sharp pitch, just fifteen feet from the summit; the car's halting; the yelp at your passenger, "Jump out and push!"; the painful next five feet; and the final death of the power just as the front wheels creep up over the pitch. Then the anxious putting on of brakes—holding the car with both foot-brake and emergency, lest it run down backward, slip off the road. The calf of your leg begins to ache from the pressure on the foot-brake, and with an unsuccessful effort to be courteous you bellow at the passenger, who has been standing beside the car looking deprecatory, "Will you please block the back wheels with a stone—hustle up, will you!"
All this routine Claire thoroughly learned. Always Milt bumbled up, said cheerful things, and either hauled the Gomez over the pitch by a towline to his bug, or getting out, pushing on a rear fender till his neck was red and bulgy, gave the extra impetus necessary to get the Gomez over.
"Would you mind shoving on that side, just a little bit?" he suggested to Mr. Boltwood, who ceased the elaborate smoking of cigars, dusted his hands, and gravely obeyed, while Claire was awaiting the new captain's command to throw on the power.
"I wish we weren't under so much obligation to this young man," said Mr. Boltwood, after one crisis.
"I know but—what can we do?"
"Don't you suppose we might pay him?"
"Henry B. Boltwood, if you tried to do that—— I'm not sure. Your being my parent might save you, but even so, I think he'd probably chase you off the road, clear down into that chasm."
"I suppose so. Shall we have to entertain him in Seattle?"
"Have to? My dear parent, you can't keep me from it! Any of the Seattle friends of Gene Gilson who don't appreciate that straight, fine, aspiring boy may go—— Not overdo it, you understand. But—— Oh, take him to the theater. By the way; shall we try to climb Mount Rainier before——"
"See here, my good dolly; you stop steering me away from my feeble parental efforts. Do you wish to be under obligations——"
"Don't mind, with Milt. He wouldn't charge interest, as Jeff Saxton would. Milt is, oh, he's folks!"
"Quite true. But are we? Are you?"
"Learning to be!"
Between discussions and not making hills, Claire cleaned the spark plugs as they accumulated carbon from the surplus oil—or she pretended to help Milt clean them. The plugs were always very hot, and when you were unscrewing the jacket from the core, you always burned your hand, and wished you could swear ... and sometimes you could.
After noon, when they had left the Park and entered Gardiner, Milt announced, "I've got to stick around a while. The key in my steering-gear seems to be worn. May have to put in a new one. Get the stuff at a garage here. If you wouldn't mind waiting, be awful glad to tag, and try to give a few helping hands till the oil cleans itself out."
"I'll just stroll on," she said, but she drove away as swiftly as she could. Her father's worry about obligations disturbed her, and she did not wish to seem too troublesome an amateur to Milt. She would see him in Livingston, and tell him how well she had driven. The spark plugs kept clean enough now so that she could command more power, but——
Between the Park and the transcontinental road there are many climbs short but severely steep; up-shoots like the humps on a scenic railway. To tackle them with her uncertain motor was like charging a machine-gun nest. She spent her nerve-force lavishly, and after every wild rush to make a climb, she had to rest, to rub the suddenly aching back of her neck. Because she was so tired, she did not take the trouble to save her brakes by going down in gear. She let the brakes smoke while the river and railroad below rose up at her.
There was a long drop. How long it was she did not guess, because it was concealed by a curve at the top. She seemed to plane down forever. The brakessquealed behind. She tried to shift to first but there was a jarring snarl, and she could neither get into first nor back into third. She was running in neutral, the great car coasting, while she tried to slow it by jamming down the foot-brake. The car halted—and started on again. The brake-lining which had been wished on her at Saddle Back was burnt out.
She had the feeling of the car bursting out from under control ... ready to leap off the road, into a wash. She wanted to jump. It took all her courage to stay in the seat. She got what pressure she could from the remaining band. With one hand she kept the accelerating car in the middle of the road; with the other she tried to pull the handle of the emergency brake back farther. She couldn't. She was not strong enough. Faster, faster, rushing at the next curve so that she could scarce steer round it——
As quietly as she could, she demanded of her father, "Pull back on this brake lever, far as you can. Take both hands."
"I don't understand——"
"Heavens! Y' don't haft un'stand! Yank back! Yank, I tell you!"
Again the car slowed. She was able to get into second speed. Even that check did not keep the car from darting down at thirty miles an hour—which pace, to one who desires to saunter down at a dignified rate of eighteen, is equivalent in terms of mileage onlevel ground to seventy an hour, with a drunken driver, on a foggy evening, amid traffic.
She got the car down and, in the midst of a valley of emptiness and quiet, she dropped her head on her father's knee and howled.
"I just can't face going down another hill! I just can't face it!" she sobbed.
"No, dolly. Mustn't. We better—— You're quite right. This young Daggett is a very gentlemanly fellow. I didn't think his table-manners—— But we'll sit here and regard the flora and fauna till he comes. He'll see us through."
"Yes! He will! Honestly, dad——" She said it with the first touch of hero-worship since she had seen an aviator loop loops. "Isn't he, oh, effective! Aren't you glad he's here to help us, instead of somebody like Jeff Saxton?"
"We-ul, you must remember that Geoffrey wouldn't have permitted the brake to burn out. He'd have foreseen it, and have had a branch office, with special leased wire, located back on that hill, ready to do business the instant the market broke. Enthusiasm is a nice quality, dolly, but don't misplace it. This lad, however trustworthy he may be, would scarcely even be allowed to work for a man like Geoffrey Saxton. It may be that later, with college——"
"No. He'd work for Jeff two hours. Then Jeff would give him that 'You poor fish!' look, and Miltwould hit him, and stroll out, and go to the North Pole or some place, and discover an oil-well, and hire Jeff as his nice, efficient general manager. And—— I do wish Milt would hurry, though!"
It was dusk before they heard the pit-pit-pit chuckling down the hill. Milt's casual grin changed to bashfulness as Claire ran into the road, her arms wide in a lovely gesture of supplication, and cried, "We been waiting for you so long! One of my brake-bands is burnt out, and the other is punk."
"Well, well. Let's try to figure out something to do."
She waited reverently while the local prophet sat in his bug, stared at the wheels of the Gomez, and thought. The level-floored, sagebrush-sprinkled hollow had filled with mauve twilight and creeping stilly sounds. The knowable world of yellow lights and security was far away. Milt was her only means of ever getting back to it.
"Tell you what we might try," he speculated. "I'll hitch on behind you, and hold back in going down hill."
She did not even try to help him while he again cleaned the spark plugs and looked over brakes, oil, gas, water. She sat on the running-board, and it was pleasant to be relieved of responsibility. He said nothing at all. While he worked he whistled that recent refined ballad:
I wanta go back to OregonAnd sit on the lawn, and look at the dawn.Oh motheruh dear, don't leavuh me here,The leaves are so sere, in the fallothe year,I wanta go back to Oregugon,To dearuh old Oregugon.
I wanta go back to OregonAnd sit on the lawn, and look at the dawn.Oh motheruh dear, don't leavuh me here,The leaves are so sere, in the fallothe year,I wanta go back to Oregugon,To dearuh old Oregugon.
They started, shouting optimistically to each other, lights on, trouble seeming over—and they stopped after the next descent, and pools of tears were in the corners of Claire's eyes. The holdback had not succeeded. Her big car, with its quick-increasing momentum, had jerked at the bug as though it were a lard-can. The tow-rope had stretched, sung, snapped, and again, in fire-shot delirium, she had gone rocking down hill.
He drove up beside her, got out, stood at her elbow. His "I'm a bum inventor. We'll try somethin' else" was so careless that, in her nerve-twanging exhaustion she wailed, "Oh, don't be so beastly cheerful! You don't care a bit!"
In the dusk she could see him straighten, and his voice came sharp as he ignored the ever-present parental background and retorted, "Somebody has got to be cheerful. Matter fact, I worked out the right stunt, coming down."
Like a man in the dentist's chair, recovering between bouts, she drowsed and ignored the fact that in a few minutes she would again have to reassemble herself,become wakeful and calm, and go through quite impossible maneuvers of driving. Milt was, with a hatchet from his camping-kit, cutting down a large scrub pine. He dragged it to the Gomez and hitched it to the back axle. The knuckles of the branches would dig into the earth, the foliage catch at every pebble.
"There! That anchor would hold a truck!" he shouted.
It held. She went down the next two hills easily. But she was through. Her forearms and brain were equally numb. She appealed to Milt, "I can't seem to go on any more. It's so dark, and I'm so tired——"
"All right. No ranch houses anywheres near, so we'll camp here, if Mr. Boltwood doesn't mind."
Claire stirred herself to help him prepare dinner. It wasn't much of a dinner to prepare. Both cars had let provisions run low. They had bacon and petrified ends of a loaf and something like coffee—not much like it. Scientists may be interested in their discovery that as a substitute for both cream and sugar in beverages strawberry jam is a fallacy.
For Mr. Boltwood's bed Milt hauled out the springy seat-cushions of both cars. The Gomez cushion was three inches thicker than that of the bug, which resulted in a mattress two stories in front with a lean-to at the foot, and the entire edifice highly slippery. But with a blanket from Milt's kit, it was sufficient.To Claire, Milt gave another blanket, his collection of antique overcoats, and good advice. He spoke vaguely of a third blanket for himself. And he had one. Its dimensions were thirteen by twenty inches, it was of white wool, he had bought it in Dakota for Vere de Vere, and many times that day he had patted it and whispered, "Poor old cat."
Under his blankets Mr. Boltwood thought of rattlesnakes, bears, rheumatism, Brooklyn, his debt to Milt, and the fact that—though he hadn't happened to mention it to Claire—he had expected to be killed when the brake had burned out.
Claire was drowsily happy. She had got through. She was conscious of rustling sagebrush, of the rapids of the Yellowstone beside her, of open sky and sweet air and a scorn for people in stuffy rooms, and comfortably ever conscious of Milt, ten feet away. She had in him the interest that a young physician would have in a new X-ray machine, a printer in a new font of type, any creator in a new outlet for his power. She would see to it that her Seattle cousins, the Gilsons, helped him to know the right people, during his university work. She herself would be back in Brooklyn, but perhaps he would write to her, write—write letters—Brooklyn—she was in Brooklyn—no, no, where was she?—oh, yes, camping—bad day—brakes—— No, she would not marry Jeff Saxton! Brooklyn—river singing—stars——
And when Milt wasn't unromantically thinking of his cold back, he exulted. "She won't be back among her own folks till Seattle. Probably forget me then. Don't blame her. But till we get there, she'll let me play in her yard. Gee! In the morning I'll be talking to her again, and she's right there, right now!"
In the morning they were all very stiff, but glad of the sun on sagebrush and river, and the boy and girl sang over breakfast. While Milt was gathering fuel he looked up at Claire standing against a background of rugged hills, her skirt and shoes still smug, but her jacket off, her blouse turned in at the throat, her hair blowing, her sleeves rolled up, one hand on her hip, erect, charged with vigor—the spirit of adventure.
When her brake had been relined, at Livingston, they sauntered companionably on to Butte. And the day after Butte, when Milt was half a mile behind the Gomez, a pink-haired man with a large, shiny revolver stepped out from certain bushes, and bowed politely, and at that point Milt stopped.
Overthe transcontinental divide and into Butte, diamond-glittering on its hills in the dark; into Missoula, where there are trees and a university, with a mountain in everybody's backyard; through the Flathead Agency, where scarlet-blanketed Indians stalk out of tepees and the papoose rides on mother's back as in forgotten days; down to St. Ignatius, that Italian Alp town with its old mission at the foot of mountains like the wall of Heaven, Claire had driven west, then north. She was sailing past Flathead Lake, where fifty miles of mountain glory are reflected in bright waters. Everywhere were sections of flat wheat-plains, stirring with threshing, with clattering machinery and the flash of blown straw. But these miniature prairies were encircled by abrupt mountains.
Mr. Boltwood remarked, "I'd rather have one of these homesteads and look across my fields at those hills than be King of England." Not that he made any effort to buy one of the homesteads. But then, he made no appreciable effort to become King of England.
Claire had not seen Milt for a day and a half; not since the morning when both cars had left Butte. Shewondered, and was piqued, and slightly lonely. Toward evening, when she was speculating as to whether she would make Kalispell—almost up to the Canadian border—she saw a woman run into the road from a house on the shore of Flathead Lake. The woman held out her hand. Claire pulled up.
"Are you Miss Boltwood?"
It was as startling as the same question would have been in a Chinese village.
"W-why, yes."
"Somebody trying to get you on the long-distance 'phone."
"Me? 'Phone?"
She was trembling. "Something's happened to Milt. He needs me!" She could not manage her voice, as she got the operator on the farmers'-line wire, and croaked, "Was some one trying to get Miss Boltwood?"
"Yes. This Boltwood? Hotel in Kalispell trying to locate you, for two hours. Been telephoning all along the line, from Butte to Somers."
"W-well, w-will you g-get 'em for me?"
It was not Milt's placid and slightly twangy voice but one smoother, more decisive, perplexingly familiar, that finally vibrated, "Hello! Hello! Miss Boltwood! Operator, I can't hear. Get me a better connection. Miss Boltwood?"
"Yes! Yes! This is Miss Boltwood!" she keptbeseeching, during a long and not unheated controversy between the unknown and the crisp operator, who knew nothing of the English language beyond, "Here's your party. Why don't you talk? Speak louder!"
Then came clearly, "Hear me now?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"Miss Boltwood?"
"Yes?"
"Oh. Oh, hello, Claire. This is Jeff."
"Jess who?"
"Not Jess. Jeff! Geoffrey! J-e-f-f! Jeff Saxton!"
"Oh!" It was like a sob. "Why—why—but you're in New York."
"Not exactly, dear. I'm in Kalispell, Montana."
"But that's right near here."
"So am I!"
"B-but——"
"Out West to see copper interests. Traced you from Yellowstone Park but missed you at Butte. Thought I'd catch you on road. You talking from Barmberry's?"
The woman who had hailed her was not missing a word of a telephone conversation which might be relative to death, fire, elopement, or any other dramatic event. Claire begged of her, "Where in the world am I talking from, anyway?"
"This is Barmberry's Inn."
"Yes," Claire answered on the telephone, "I seem to be. Shall I start on and——"
"No. Got ripping plan. Stay right where you are. Got a fast car waiting. Be right down. We'll have dinner. By!"
A click. No answer to Claire's urgent hellos. She hung up the receiver very, very carefully. She hated to turn and face her audience of Mr. Henry B. Boltwood, Mr. James Barmberry, Mrs. James Barmberry, and four Barmberry buds averaging five and a quarter in age. She tried to ignore the Barmberrys, but their silence was noisy and interested while she informed her father, "It's Jeff Saxton! Out here to see copper mines. Telephoned along road to catch us. Says we're to wait dinner till he comes."
"Yessum," Mrs. Barmberry contributed, "he told me if I did catch you, I was to have some new-killed chickens ready to fry, and some whipped cream—— Jim Barmberry, you go right out and finish whipping that cream, and don't stand there gawping and gooping, and you children, you scat!"
Claire seized the moment of Mr. Boltwood's lordly though bewildered bow to their hostess, and escaped outdoors. Round the original settler's log-cabin were nests of shacks and tents, for bedrooms, and on a screened porch, looking on Flathead Lake, was the dining-room. The few other guests had finished supper and gone to their tents.
She ambled to the lake shore, feeling feebler, more slapped and sent back to be a good little girl, than she had when Milt had hitched a forest to the back axle, three days ago. A map of her thoughts about Jeff Saxton would have shown a labyrinth. Now, she was muttering, "Dear Jeff! So thoughtful! Clever of him to find me! So good to see him again!" Now: "It's still distinctly understood that I am not engaged to him, and I'm not going to be surprised into kissing him when he comes down like a wolf on the fold." Now: "Jeff Saxton! Here! Makes me homesick for the Heights. And nice shops in Manhattan, and a really good play—music just before the curtain goes up." Now: "Ohhhhhh geeeeee whizzzzzz! I wonder if he'll let us go any farther in the car? He's so managerial, and dad is sure to take his side. He tried to scare us off by that telegram to Fargo." Now: "He'd be horrified if he knew about that bum brake. Milt didn't mind. Milt likes his womenfolks to be daring. Jeff wants his harem admiring and very reliable."
She crouched on the shore, a rather forlorn figure. The peaks of the Mission Range, across the violet-shadowed mirror of Flathead Lake, were a sudden pure rose, in reflection of sunset, then stony, forbidding. Across the road, on the Barmberry porch, she could hear her father saying "Ah?" and "Indeed?" to James's stories.
Up the road, a blaring horn, great lights growingmomently more dazzling, a roar, a rush, the halting car, and out of its blurred bulk, a trim figure darting—Jeff Saxton—home and the people she loved, and the ways and days she knew best of all. He had shouted only "Is Miss——" before she had rushed to him, into the comfort of his arms, and kissed him.
She backed off and tried to sound as if it hadn't happened, but she was quavery: "I can't believe it! It's too ridiculously wonderful to see you!" She retreated toward the Barmberry porch, Jeff following, his two hands out. They came within the range of the house lights, and Mr. Boltwood hailed, "Ah! Geoffrey! Never had such a surprise—nor a more delightful one!"
"Mr. Boltwood! Looking splendid, sir! New man! William Street better look to its laurels when you come back and get into the game!"
Then, on the lamp-lighted porch, the two men shook hands, and looked for some other cordial thing to do. They thought about giving each other cigars. They smiled, and backed away, and smiled, in the foolish, indeterminate way males have, being unable to take it out in kissing. Mr. Boltwood solved the situation by hemming, "Must trot in and wash. See you very soon." Mr. James Barmberry and the squad of lesser Barmberrys regretfully followed. Claire was alone with Jeff, and she was frightened. Yet she was admitting that Jeff, in his English cap and flaringLondon top-coat, his keen smile and his extreme shavedness, was more attractive than she had remembered.
"Glad to see me?" he demanded.
"Oh, rather!"
"You're looking——"
"You're so——"
"Nice trip? You know you've sent me nothing but postcards with 'Pretty town,' or something equally sentimental."
"Yes, it's really been bully. These mountains and big spaces simply inspire me." She said it rather defiantly.
"Of course they do! Trouble is, with you away, we've nothing to inspire us!"
"Do you need anything, with your office and your club?"
"Why, Claire!"
"I'm sorry. That was horrid of me."
"Yes, it was. Though I don't mind. I'm sure we've all become meek, missing you so. I'm quite willing to be bullied, and reminded that I'm a mere T.B.M."
She had got herself into it; she had to tell him that he wasn't just a business man; that she had "just meant" he was so practical.
"But Jeff is no longer the practical one," he declared. "Think of Claire driving over deserts andmountains. But—— Oh, it's been so lonely for us. Can you guess how much? A dozen times every evening, I've turned to the telephone to call you up and beg you to let me nip in and see you, and then realized you weren't there, and I've just sat looking at the 'phone—— Oh, other people are so dull!"
"You really miss——"
"I wish I were a poet, so I could tell you adequately. But you haven't said you missed me, Claire. Didn't you, a teeny bit? Wouldn't it have been tolerable to have poor old Jeff along, to drive down dangerous hills——"
"And fill grease-cups! Nasty and stickum on the fingers!"
"Yes, I'd have done that, too. And invented surprises along the way. I'm a fine surpriser! I've arranged for a motor-boat so we can explore the lake here tomorrow. That's why I had you wait here instead of coming on to Kalispell. Tomorrow morning, unfortunately, I have to hustle back and catch a train—called to California, and possibly a northern trip. But meantime—— By now, my driver must have sneaked my s'prises into the kitchen."
"What are they?"
"Guess."
"Food. Eats. Divine eats."
"Maybe."
"But what? Please, sir. Claire is so hungry."
"We shall see in time, my child. Uncle Jeff is not to be hurried."
"Ah—let—me—see—now! I'll kick and scream!"
From New York Jeff had brought a mammoth picnic basket. To the fried chicken ordered for dinner he added sealed jars of purée of wood pigeon, of stuffed artichokes prepared by his club chef; caviar and anchovies; a marvelous nightmare-creating fruit cake to go with the whipped cream; two quarts of a famous sherry; candied fruits in a silver box. Dinner was served not on the dining-porch but before the fire in the Barmberrys' living-room. Claire looked at the candied fruits, stared at Jeff rather queerly—as though she was really thinking of some one else—and mused:
"I didn't know I cared so much for these foolish luxuries. Tonight, I'd like a bath, just a tiny bit scented, and a real dressing-table with a triple mirror, and French talc, and come down in a dinner-gown—— Oh, I have enjoyed the trip, Jeff. But my poor body does get so tired and dusty, and then you treacherously come along with these things that you've magicked out of the mountains and—— I'm not a pioneer woman, after all. And Henry B. is not a caveman. See him act idolatrously toward his soup."
"I feel idolatrous. I'd forgotten the supreme ethical importance of the soup. I'll never let myself forget it again," said Mr. Boltwood, in the tone of one who has come home.
Claire was grateful to Jeff that he did not let her go on being grateful. He turned the talk to Brooklyn. He was neat and explicit—and almost funny—in his description of an outdoor presentation ofMidsummer Night's Dream, in which a domestic and intellectual lady weighing a hundred and eighty-seven stageside had enacted Puck. As they sat after dinner, as Claire shivered, he produced a knitted robe, and pulled it about her shoulders, smiling at her in a lonely, hungry way. She caught his hand.
"Nice Jeff!" she whispered.
"Oh, my dear!" he implored. He shook his head in a wistful way that caught her heart, and dutifully went back to informing Mr. Boltwood of the true state of the markets.
"Talk to Claire too!" she demanded. She stopped, stared. From outside she heard a nervous pit-pit-pit, a blurred dialogue between Mr. James Barmberry and another man. Into the room rambled Milt Daggett, dusty of unpressed blue suit, tired of eyes, and not too well shaved of chin, grumbling, "Thought I'd never catch up with you, Claire—— Why——"
"Oh! Oh, Milt—Mr. Daggett—— Oh, Jeff, this is our good friend Milt Daggett, who has helped us along the road."
Jeff's lucid rimless spectacles stared at Milt's wind-reddened eyes; his jaunty patch-pocket outing clothes sniffed at Milt's sweater; his even voice followedMilt's grunt of surprise with a curt "Ah. Mr. Daggett."
"Pleased meet you," faltered Milt.
Jeff nodded, turned his shoulder on Milt, and went on, "The fact is, Mr. Boltwood, the whole metal market——"
Milt was looking from one to another. Claire was now over her first shocked comparison of candied fruits with motor grease. She rose, moved toward Milt, murmuring, "Have you had dinner?"
The door opened again. A pink-haired, red-faced man in a preposterous green belted suit lunged in, swept his broad felt hat in greeting, and boomed like a cheap actor:
"Friends of my friend Milt, we about to dine salute you. Let me introduce myself as Westlake Parrott, better known to the vulgar as Pinky Parrott, gentleman adventurer, born in the conjunction of Mars and Venus, with Saturn ascendant."
Jeff had ignored Milt. But at this absurd second intrusion on his decidedly private dinner-party he flipped to the center of the room and said "I beg your pardon!" in such a head-office manner that the pink-locked Mystery halted in his bombast. Claire felt wabbly. She had no theories as to where Milt had acquired a private jester, nor as to what was about to happen to Milt—and possibly to her incautious self.
AsMilt had headed westward from Butte, as he rattled peacefully along the road, conscious of golden haze over all the land, and the unexpectedness of prairie threshing-crews on the sloping fields of mountainsides, a man had stepped out from bushes beside the road, and pointed a .44 navy revolver.
The man was not a movie bandit. He wore a green imitation of a Norfolk jacket, he had a broad red smile, and as he flourished his hat in a bow, his hair was a bristly pompadour of gray-streaked red that was almost pink. He made oration:
"Pardon my eccentric greeting, brother of the open road, but I wanted you to give ear to my obsequious query as to how's chances on gettin' a lift? I have learned that obsequiousness is best appreciated when it is backed up by prayer and ca'tridges."
"What's the idea? I seem to gather you'd like a lift. Jump in."
"You do not advocate the Ciceronian style, I take it," chuckled the man as he climbed aboard.
Milt was not impressed. Claire might have been, but Milt had heard politics and religion argued about the stove in Rauskukle's store too often to be startledby polysyllabomania. He knew it was often the sign of a man who has read too loosely and too much by himself. He snorted. "Huh! What are you—newspaper, politics, law, preacher, or gambler?"
"Well, a little of all those interesting occupations. And ten-twent-thirt trouping, and county-fair spieling, and selling Dr. Thunder Rapids' Choctaw Herbal Sensitizer. How far y' going?"
"Seattle."
"Honest? Say, kid, this is—— Muh boy, we shall have the rare privilege of pooling adventures as far as Blewett Pass, four to six days' run from here—a day this side of Seattle. I'm going to my gold-mine there. I'll split up on the grub—I note from your kit that you camp nights. Quite all right, my boy. Pinky Parrott is no man to fear night air."
He patted Milt's shoulder with patronizing insolence. He filled a pipe and, though the car was making twenty-five, he lighted the pipe with distinguished ease, then settled down to his steady stride:
"In the pride of youth, you feel that you have thoroughly categorized me, particularly since I am willing to admit that, though I shall have abundance of the clinking iron men to buy my share of our chow, I chance just for the leaden-footed second to lack the wherewithal to pay my railroad fare back to Blewett; and the bumpers and side-door Pullman of the argonauts like me not. Too damn dusty. But your analysisis unsynthetic, though you will scarce grasp my paradoxical metaphor."
"The hell I won't. I've taken both chemistry and rhetoric," growled Milt, strictly attending to driving, and to the desire to get rid of his parasite.
"Oh! Oh, I see. Well, anyway: I am no mere nimble knight of wits, as you may take it. In fact, I am lord of fair acres in Arcady."
"Don't know the burg. Montana or Idaho?"
"Neither! In the valley of dream!"
"Oh! That one. Huh!"
"But I happen to back them up with a perfectly undreamlike gold-mine. Prospected for it in a canyon near Blewett Pass and found it, b' gum, and my lady wife, erstwhile fairest among the society favorites of North Yakima, now guards it against her consort's return. Straight goods. Got the stuff. Been to Butte to get a raise on it, but the fell khedives of commerce are jealous. They would hearken not. Gee, those birds certainly did pull the frigid mitt! So I wend my way back to the demure Dolores, the houri of my heart, and the next time I'll take a crack at the big guns in Seattle. And I'll sure reward you for your generosity in taking me to Blewett, all the long, long, languid, languorous way——"
"Too bad I got to stop couple of days at Spokane."
"Well, then you shall have the pleasure of taking me that far."
"And about a week in Kalispell!"
"'Twill discommode me, but 'pon honor, I like your honest simple face, and I won't desert you. Besides! I know a guy in Kalispell, and I can panhandle the sordid necessary chuck while I wait for you. Little you know, my cockerel, how facile a brain your 'bus so lightly bears. When I've cashed in on the mine, I'll take my rightful place among the motored gentry. Not merely as actor and spieler, promoter and inventor and soldier and daring journalist, have I played my rôle, but also I am a mystic, an initiate, a clairaudient, a psychometrist, a Rosicrucian adept, and profoundly psychic—in fact, my guide is Hermes Trismegistus himself! I also hold a degree as doctor of mento-practic, and my studies in astro-biochemistry——"
"Gonna stop. All off. Make little coffee," said Milt.
He did not desire coffee, and he did not desire to stop, but he did desperately desire not to inflict Pinky Parrott upon the Boltwoods. It was in his creed as a lover of motors never to refuse a ride to any one, when he had room. He hoped to get around his creed by the hint implied in stopping. Pinky's reaction to the hint was not encouraging:
"Why, you have a touch of the psychic's flare! I could do with coffee myself. But don't trouble to make a fire. I'll do that. You drive—I do the camp work. Not but that I probably drive better than you,if you will permit me to say so. I used to do a bit of racing, before I took up aviation."
"Huh! Aviation! What machine d'you fly?"
"Why, why—a biplane!"
"Huh! What kind of motor?"
"Why, a foreign one. The—the—— It was a French motor."
"Huh! What track you race on?"
"The—— Pardon me till I build a fire for oural frescocollation, and I my driving history will unfold."
But he didn't do either.
After he had brought seven twigs, one piece of sagebrush, and a six-inch board, Pinky let Milt finish building the fire, while he told how much he knew about the mysteries of ancient Egyptian priests.
Milt gave up hope that Pinky would become bored by waiting and tramp on. After one hour of conversational deluge, he decided to let Pinky drive—to make him admit that he couldn't. He was wrong. Pinky could drive. He could not drive well, he wabbled in his steering, and he killed the engine on a grade, but he showed something of the same dashing idiocy that characterized his talk. It was Milt not Pinky, who was afraid of their running off the road, and suggested resuming the wheel.
Seven times that day Milt tried to lose him. Once he stopped without excuse, and merely stared up atrocks overhanging the hollowed road. Pinky was not embarrassed. He leaned back in the seat and sang two Spanish love songs. Once Milt deliberately took a wrong road, up a mountainside. They were lost, and took five hours getting back to the highway. Pinky loved the thrill and—in a brief address lasting fifteen minutes—he said so.
Milt tried to bore him by driving at seven miles an hour. Pinky affectionately accepted this opportunity to study the strata of the hills. When they camped, that night, Pinky loved him like a brother, and was considering not stopping at Blewett Pass, to see his gold-mine and Dolores the lady-wife, but going clear on to Seattle with his playmate.
The drafted host lay awake, and when Pinky awoke and delivered a few well-chosen words on the subject of bird-song at dawn, Milt burst out:
"Pinky, I don't like to do it, but—— I've never refused a fellow a lift, but I'm afraid you'll have to hike on by yourself, the rest of the way."
Pinky sat up in his blankets. "Afraid of me, eh? You better be! I'm a bad actor. I killed Dolores's husband, and took her along, see? I——"
"Are you trying to scare me, you poor four-flusher?" Milt's right hand expanded, fingers arching, with the joyous tension of a man stretching.
"No. I'm just reading your thoughts. I'm telling you you're scared of me! You think that if I wenton, I might steal your car! You're afraid because I'm so suave. You aren't used to smooth ducks. You don't dare to let me stick with you, even for today! You're afraid I'd have your mis'able car by tonight! You don't dare!"
"The hell I don't!" howled Milt. "If you think I'm afraid—— Just to show you I'm not, I'll let you go on today!"
"That's sense, my boy. It would be a shame for two such born companions of the road to part!" Pinky had soared up from his blankets; was lovingly shaking Milt's hand.
Milt knew that he had been tricked, but he felt hopeless. Was it impossible to insult Pinky? He tried again:
"I'll be frank with you. You're the worst wind-jamming liar I ever met. Now don't reach for that gat of yours. I've got a hefty rock right here handy."
"But, my dear, dear boy, I don't intend to reach for any crude lethal smoke-wagon. Besides, there isn't anything in it. I hocked the shells in Butte. I am not angry, merely grieved. We'll argue this out as we have breakfast and drive on. I can prove to you that, though occasionally I let my fancy color mere untutored fact with the pigments of a Robert J. Ingersoll—— By the way, do you know his spiel on whisky?"
"Stick to the subject. We'll finish our arguingright now, and I'll give you breakfast, and we'll sadly part."
"Merely because I am lighter of spirits than this lugubrious old world? No! I decline to be dropped. I'll forgive you and go on with you. Mind you, I am sensitive. I will not intrude where I am not welcome. Only you must give me a sounder reason than my diverting conversational powers for shucking me. My logic is even stronger than my hedonistic contempt for hitting the pike."
"Well, hang it, if you must know—— Hate to say it, but I'd do almost anything to get rid of you. Fact is, I've been sort of touring with a lady and her father, and you would be in the way!"
"Aaaaaaah! You see! Why, my boy, I will not only stick, but for you, I shall do the nimble John Alden and win the lady fair. I will so bedizen your virile, though somewhat crassly practical gifts—— Why, women are my long suit. They fall for——"
"Tut, tut, tut! You're a fool. She's no beanery mistress, like you're used to. She really is a lady."
"How blind you are, cruel friend. You do not even see that whatever my vices may be, my social standing——"
"Oh—shut—up! Can't you see I'm trying to be kind to you? Have I simply got to beat you up before you begin to suspect you aren't welcome? Your social standing isn't even in the telephone book. And yourvocabulary—— You let too many 'kids' slip in among the juicy words. Have I got to lick——"