Color-Tone, engraved for THECENTURYby H. C. Merrill and H. Davidson“’YOU’RE ALIVE, THANK HEAVEN!... SHALL I SEND FOR A PARSON?’”DRAWN BY HARRY RALEIGH⇒LARGER IMAGEHeadpiece, A GARAGE IN THE SUNSHINEA GARAGE IN THE SUNSHINEBY JOSEPH ERNESTWITH A PICTURE BY HARRY RALEIGH
Color-Tone, engraved for THECENTURYby H. C. Merrill and H. Davidson“’YOU’RE ALIVE, THANK HEAVEN!... SHALL I SEND FOR A PARSON?’”DRAWN BY HARRY RALEIGH⇒LARGER IMAGE
Color-Tone, engraved for THECENTURYby H. C. Merrill and H. Davidson
“’YOU’RE ALIVE, THANK HEAVEN!... SHALL I SEND FOR A PARSON?’”
DRAWN BY HARRY RALEIGH
⇒LARGER IMAGE
Headpiece, A GARAGE IN THE SUNSHINE
BY JOSEPH ERNEST
WITH A PICTURE BY HARRY RALEIGH
FALLING in love is specially a critical business for simple-minded persons who have room in their heads for only one idea at a time. It has a tendency to shift the basis of their existence in a perilous degree before they are in the least aware what has happened to them.
Like most persons who earn their living at the daily risk of their lives, Teddy Rocco was not burdened with too active an imagination. He did his regular ninety miles an hour round the motordromes on a “Yellow Fiend” autocycle with a simple faith in his luck and no higher aspirations than he could express in this way:
“No, sir, you won’t find me in this speed game one day longer than it takes me to clean up the price of a share in a cement garage, with machine-tools complete, and beat it back to sunny Jax, Florida.”
It was this ambition that led him, when he was not racing, to give exhibitions at Santoni’s velodrome at Palmetto Beach, a track known to the speed profession as the “Devil’s Soup-plate.” It was the same lack of imagination that enabled him to hear of the introduction of Miss Sadie Simmons to the soup-plate with feelings of unmingled disgust.
“A girl!” he ejaculated, and made for Santoni’s office with his features richly adorned with chain lubricant. “A girl! Yes, and a speed limit, too, I reckon, and pretty-pretty stunts, and bouquets—what do you know? Better call it the ’Angel’s Roundabout,’ and be done!”
The graphite lubricant failed to conceal the scowl on his face as he burst into the office. The proprietor, a keen purveyor of popular excitement, was rubbing his hands in Mephistophelian satisfaction over a new poster.
“Daredevil Ted Rocco,” it said, and “Wild Will Ryan”; and below, in big red type that crowded the rest almost off the sheet, “Miss Sadie Simmons, America’s Queen of the Track.” From which the sagacious reader will infer that Miss Simmons was new and unproved; otherwise Santoni would infallibly have billed her as “Crazy Sadie,” in suggestion of death-defying recklessness.
“Hullo, Teddy!” cried Santoni in his mighty voice. “What you been doing to your face?”
“Greasin’ up,” Teddy answered shortly, and cast a malevolent glance at the bill. “Listen here, San. What’s all this talk about a skirt comin’ on? We don’t run any musical leg-show here, you know. If you let a dame on to this track, it’s going to put the speeds on the blink, and then you’ll need a complete Ziegfeld chorus to hold the crowd. I’ve got a fine motion-picture of myself bein’ paced by something in bag-tights and a picture-hat.”
Santoni frowned warningly, jerked his head toward the half-open door of his sanctum, and passed a large, embarrassed hand over his heavy showman’s jowl.
“I do’ know, Ted,” he growled.“Maybe she ain’t any funeral, either, if you can believe her. But if you fancy your chance, you can argue the point with her yourself, for she’s right here. Miss Simmons!”
From Santoni’s sanctum came the sound of a chair abruptly pushed back, and the click of high heels on the floor. The proprietor turned away under the pretense of affixing the poster to the wall; then the door opened wide and revealed “America’s Queen of the Track.”
For a moment she inspected Teddy Rocco with the interest of a professional rival. He did not look at all like a daredevil just then, but merely a rather astonished little man with a square mechanic’s jaw and a compact, wiry figure, his sleeves rolled up and his arms and face besmeared. There was some reason for his astonishment, too, for in America’s “Queen,” instead of the superannuated, hard-featured circus-performer he had expected, he saw a rather shy, spruce little girl, with bright, black eyes and an absurdly small nose. Her dark hair hung in two thick, glossy ropes over her shoulders, and her skirt was short enough to reveal several inches of well-modeled ankle.
“What is it, Mr. Santoni?” she asked in a small, husky voice.
“It’s only Ted Rocco,” explained the proprietor. “He don’t think you’ll be fast enough for this track.”
The girl stared at Teddy as though he had questioned her respectability.
“How do youknowI won’t?” she demanded.
They were particularly bright eyes. The daredevil shifted uncomfortably, and his own eyes wandered over the room as though in search of succor.
“It isn’t that, exactly,” he stammered; “but, you see, miss, we let ’em rip here. My makers pay for speed, and I got to show speed or I don’t collect.”
“You aren’t so much,” retorted the “Queen.” “I bet you don’t average ninety, and I touched ninety myself at Coney last week.”
The daredevil’s eyes ceased to wander, meeting hers in a stare of blank incredulity.
“You did ninety? You!” he said. “For the love of Mike!”
“Why shouldn’t I? My makers pay for speed, too. And when they send me along something with more power to it, I guess I’ll lap you every mile. I think you’re mean to knock me just because I’m not a man.”
“You see?” said Santoni, shrugging his shoulders.
Whereupon the daredevil mumbled apologies, and retreated to the garage in great discomfiture. He sat brooding on a pile of gasolene-cans and watched Wild Will Ryan circling the track in a private try-out; but instead of the racing auto-cycle, he saw only two black eyes that stared reproachfully, and heard a small, curiously deep, and husky voice that assured him over and over again that he was mean.
When Ryan dismounted, red-eyed and hoarse from cleaving the air like a projectile, Ted was still fidgeting with a wrench and muttering gloomily.
“Is it a goil?” asked Ryan.
“Search me. It looks like one—a little brown girl about as big as a ten-cent cigar. But with a nerve! Tips me the crinkled nose because I said she might get in the way on a small track. Reckons I don’t average ninety—me, that’s held five records! And when her dear manufacturers, understand me, send her the cute little peacherino of a sixteen-cylinder, eighty-horse dynamite-gun that they’re building for her to go to finishing-school on, she’s going to make me look like a pram-pusher with paralysis. Can you beat it?”
“Never heard of her,” said Ryan. “She must be a new one in this game.”
“Oh, she’s all kinds of new, take it from me. But if she tries to do ninety an hour round this saucer, we won’t pick up enough of her to be worth dressing.”
Teddy swung off to remove the stains of toil from his face. When he reappeared, normally dapper, as becomes a successful autocyclist, he found little Miss Simmons preparing to try the track. Her costume wrung from him an involuntary exclamation. Her cap, coat, and knickers were all of gleaming scarlet leather.
“Isn’t she the dandy?” grinned Ryan, as they stood aside and watched her. “I reckon she knows the business, at that. She just shooed her mechanic away, and started in to fix all the juice connections herself. And look at her now, testing every spoke with her fingers. Some great kid!”
“What’s she riding?” asked Teddy.
“Flying Centaur; new make, I guess. Bet she pulls down a wad for it, too. Chunky little thing, ain’t she? You wouldn’t think she carried metal to see her in skirts. If she took a spill at ninety, she’d bounce some.”
“Oh, shut your head!” exclaimed Teddy Rocco, with a sudden anger that puzzled even himself.
It was not without a tinge of professional jealousy that the two young men stood in the center of the course and watched Miss Simmons pull her bright new machine to the starting-point and climb into the saddle. In Teddy’s mind there was also a certain jealousy of Santoni, who held her for the start. But with the first healthy rip of the exhaust, and the first smooth and perfect circle she described round the soup-plate, these feelings were submerged in professional appreciation.
Moment by moment she gathered speed, mounting the steep banking accurately with every lap, until she was roaring and rattling round the very uppermost edge like a bright-red marble in a basin. Santoni slowly sauntered over to them, performing a sort of involuntary waltz as he turned to follow her with his goggle eyes.
“Maybe she ain’t no funeral, either,” he said.
“You ought to be lynched for letting her do it, San,” said Teddy. “It isn’t a girl’s game.”
“Well, wouldn’t that jar you?” Santoni turned on Ryan with palms outspread. “First he was sore because he thought she couldn’t ride, and now he’s sore because she can!”
Teddy made no reply. A new and strange feeling gripped him by the throat until he choked. As he watched the track, a picture engraved itself indelibly on his heart: a tiny scarlet figure astride a machine that roared round and round with fiendish energy until it hung out almost horizontally from the steep rim of the banking. Sadie’s black eyes were narrowed to slits; her roped hair flew out behind her; her lips were compressed in the lust of speed as she braced her strong little knees and elbows hard against the leaping of her angry motor. This was a sort of girl he had never imagined in his wildest speculations. A girl who understood motors, he thought, could not fail to be in every other way admirable. From such a girl, for example, a man need never fear anything less than a square deal.
When she cut off her ignition and slipped gradually down the banking, he was the first to assist her to alight.
“Say, kid, I want to tell you I’m sorry,” he whispered before the others ran up. “I’m glad you’re going to ride with us.”
For a moment the “Queen’s” eyes danced with pleasure; then they became softly diffident again as she turned away to stable her machine.
“I don’t fancy I’ll let the show down so badly,” she smiled over her shoulder.
In truth, the popularity of Sadie Simmons among the crowds that flocked to the velodrome was immediate and great. She was irresistibly diminutive and dainty, and silent and retiring in manner when not racing; but once on her machine, rattling and bouncing round the circumscribed track with the noise of a whole express-train, she was transformed into a little red imp of daring unexcelled by the men; and though they consistently beat her when it came to a test, it was Sadie whom the crowds cheered and the fans petted.
A faded woman, of an incurable pessimism, clucked everywhere after her, like a hen after an adventurous duckling. Except for this unexhilarating person, whom she addressed as “Aunty,” but who frequently forgot the suggested relationship and called her “Miss,” Sadie appeared to be quite alone in the world. She accepted with frank pleasure the friendly advances of the fans, the comradeship of Wild Will Ryan, and the wondering worship of Teddy Rocco.
One morning Ryan emerged from the garage, laughing immoderately, and pressing a hand to his face.
“What’s bitin’ you, Irish?” inquired Teddy.
The big Irishman withdrew his hand, and exhibited a cheek decorated with the imprint of small and oily fingers on a ground that flamed scarlet.
“It’s little Sadie; she’s straight, that’s all,” he replied with a grin, as though he had discovered a choice witticism.
Teddy tore off his coat and flung it from him recklessly, and his cheek flamed suddenly redder than Ryan’s.
“Yes, and you’ll be stiff when I’m through with you, you big loafer!” he said savagely.“How’d you find that out?”
Ryan stretched forth a long arm, and swept his colleague into a hug like a bear’s.
“Be aisy, little man,” he said. “I just tried to kiss her while she was fightin’ with a set o’ new piston-rings. I got mine all right—from the lady.”
But Teddy tore loose and rushed into the garage, where he found Sadie still struggling with a recalcitrant piston of her dismounted motor. He seized a cold chisel from the work-bench.
“What did that fresh Mick say to you?” he demanded.
“Drop it at once, Teddy,” commanded Sadie. “When I can’t manage Ryan with my own hands, I’ll get a gun. Besides, I want you to hold these rings tight for me, so I can push this piston in.”
Teddy obeyed, marveling at the strength of the small brown fingers that had essayed the task unaided. Once more that strange, choking sensation assailed him, and he felt his eyes unaccountably filling with tears.
“Sadie, you’re an everlasting little marvel,” he said. “I expect you’ll marry one of these rich fans; but I wish it was me.”
“I don’t want to marry anybody,” the girl replied. “Say, can’t you hold those rings in without trembling so?”
“But you got to marry somebody,” Teddy insisted.
“I don’t have to,—there, that’s well in at last,—at least not for a long time, till I get good and ready. And then he’ll have to be extra good and handsome and rich. I’m awfully ambitious, you know.”
“That’s all right, kid,”—Teddy swallowed a lump in his throat,—“but take care you don’t put it off too long.”
The girl looked up from her work with a puzzled air.
“Take a good slant at me,” explained Teddy. “Don’t you see anything in my eyes?”
“They look queer, kind of anxious and strained. They’re like Will Ryan’s.”
“Everybody that stays in this game as long as we have gets the same look. It comes from being scared stiff once or twice, and not being able to forget it.”
“I’m never scared,” said Miss Simmons, with a toss of her shapely little head.
“You haven’t begun yet. Wait till some one drops in front of you in the last lap, and you have just half a second to make up your mind whether you’ll run over him or take a chance among the crowd. One stunt like that, and you won’t be so pretty.”
“Then you can ask me again,” said Miss Simmons, with her usual quiet self-possession. “I can almost see you doing it.”
“I tell you it’s no game for a girl,” Teddy persisted.
“Why not? I’d look nicer dead than you.”
“Touch wood when you say that,” advised Teddy, laying his own hand on the bench.
“I won’t,” the girl retorted. “I reckoned all the chances before I came into the game, and there’s no one to cry over me if I did get killed except Aunty, and she’s made up her mind to it long ago and become quite resigned. Besides, I’ve taken chances ever since I can remember. Did you ever play the carnivals? I was raised in them, if you can call it that. I did the high dive for years into a sort of canvas bucket half-full of water, and I don’t think I’ve a scare in me.”
TEDDYROCCOmight have recalled this conversation, with superstitious interest in its prophetic nature, the week before he left for the prize meetings; but that, with most other things, was swept out of his mind when he hunted for Santoni with blood on his face, swearing that he had always intended to kill the proprietor and might as well get it over.
It all happened in consequence of Santoni’s attempt to achieve a gala finish to his season before his stars departed. To that end, he had employed many banners in decoration of the velodrome, and one of them, insecurely affixed to its post, came loose while the riders were in mid-career. It fluttered aimlessly down upon the track, was caught up in the wind of Ryan’s rush, danced a little behind him, and finally wrapped itself round Sadie’s front wheel. There was a gasp of horror from the spectators as the flimsy, yellow cotton wound itself tightly on the hub.
For a fraction of a second the heavy cycle, urged by its frantic motor, slurred along the track with its front wheel jammed; then the tire burst, the forks snapped like carrots, and Sadie’s tiny redfigure shot ahead over the handle-bars, struck the wire fence in front of the spectators, and fell back limply on the track.
In that final emergency she had retained presence of mind enough to cut off the ignition, and below her on the incline her machine lay crumpled and inert, as silent and shattered as herself.
Teddy Rocco was fully fifty yards behind; that is, he had a good long second in which to do his thinking. To his left was Sadie’s machine, on his right the crowd yelled an inarticulate chorus of fear and warning, which he heard above the roar of his motor. Dead ahead of him lay a small, outstretched figure in torn and dusty scarlet leather; and immediately above the white little face was a clear foot of almost perpendicular banking.
With a prayer for speed, he tore his throttle wide open, and steered straight for that pale, blood-stained face until he could see the dark lashes on the flickering eyelids; then with a violent swerve he shot up the incline, and cleared her by inches.
The spectators cried aloud in terror as his front wheel rose on the wire mesh in front of them, raced along it for a yard or two, shaved a fence-post, and slipped back upon the track. The machine lurched sickeningly into the hollow of the banking in a last effort to recover its balance.
Teddy Rocco’s engine had stopped as he cleared the girl, and his toe was pressed hard into the fork of his front wheel. The braked tire screeched along the track, and when at last he struck the ground, his speed was not more than twenty miles an hour. To the crowd it seemed that he lay just where he had fallen, and they roared aloud in relief, and in admiration of what appeared to be purely consummate pluck and skill.
When Teddy recovered his senses, drank out of a flask that Ryan held to his lips, and stared about him, the first thing he saw was a tiny patch of red disappearing over the edge of the track in the arms of the attendants. Behind walked the faded woman he knew as “Aunty,” wringing her hands in utterly justified pessimism. At one entrance a knot of spectators filed sadly out, and among them a frightened woman wept without restraint.
Teddy went mad. He wanted to follow the little red patch wherever it might be bound. Restrained from this, he desired greatly the death of Santoni.
“I told him them things was dangerous,” he repeated, with the futile insistence of an intoxicated man.
When they laid hands on him again, he fainted, and it was then that they had the first opportunity to ascertain that his shoulder was dislocated. With the tenderness of a woman, Ryan picked him up and bore him away.
DURINGthe week before he was due to depart Teddy besieged the hospital in which lay Sadie’s tortured little form, and sent up flowers daily, until at last the nurse assured him that she had been able to see them, and even to hold some of them in her hand. At this he begged and stormed and wept until he was allowed to see her, despite the fact that, as they explained to him in vain, it was not visitors’ day.
But when he stood at her bedside, and she smiled wanly up at him out of her bandages, and even put forth a very white little hand for him to shake, a great peace came over him. There was still enough of her, after all, to be worth dressing.
“Tough luck, Teddy-Eddy!” she whispered in that deep, small voice of hers. “Just to think I might never hear the band play for the start again, or the engine rip when I turn on the juice—it gives me a lot to worry about. You ought to be glad I didn’t take you at your word that day in the garage when you wanted to lay Ryan out and asked me to marry you. Look at what a fix you’d be in now!”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” murmured Teddy. “I’d have wanted you just the same.”
“Do you mean to say you’d marry a wreck like me, Teddy Rocco? I’m all to pieces; you haven’t a notion how badly I got mashed.”
“And I don’t care, neither,” said Teddy, stoutly. “You’re alive, thank Heaven! And you’re Sadie Simmons, and you can smile. Shall I send for a parson?”
“What, now?”
“Only say the word.”
The girl picked at the sheet for a moment, and her eyes, now ringed with suffering and no longer bright, searched his face wonderingly; but they found no trace of an emotion other than eagerness to be as good as his word.
“I don’t know,” she said at last; “it’ll need thinking over. You know, it was hitting the wire fence that saved me, Teddy. It was like diving into a net.”
“Pretty hard net,” grinned the boy, reminiscently.
“Lucky for you, or you’d have gone through it. Teddy boy, why didn’t you run over me? I’m so small! You must have been mad to ride into the fence like that.”
“Who told you?” demanded Teddy.
“Nurse. She says you hadn’t a chance in a thousand to get round me without breaking your neck. I always liked you, Teddy. I’m glad you’re brave.”
“Then why not marry me, Sadie?” The boy came closer, while the nurse hovered about impatiently. “You can’t come back, you know. However good they patch you up, you’re done with the game.”
“Marry you, after what I said about looking for a rich guy? I’m bad and selfish, and I want so much. And I’m older than you think—nearly nineteen. I only wore my hair that way for a stall. Would you really marry me now, when I’m all cut up and no one else would look at me?”
“Call me and see,” suggested Teddy, quietly.
“I’ll let you know later, Teddy. It depends—”
“But I’m going to Dayton to-night to race, and then I go South again. How am I to know?”
Sadie considered for a moment with eyes closed. When she opened them again, her face was very grave.
“Come past here on your way to the depot,” she said, “and look at this window above the bed. It’s the fourth from the end. If the blind’s up, you can bring along your parson.”
“And if it’s down?”
“If it’s down, it will mean that you’d better forget all about me.”
“Then leave it up, Sadie,” he whispered as the nurse bustled up suggestively. “I’m only two thousand short of buying a garage in Florida, where I used to work. You’d love to be down there—all sunshine, pelicans, palms, and sugar-cane, and butterflies as big as your hand soaring about. You’d get well and strong down there, Sadie, and I’d be so good to you! Don’t let them pull it down!”
The nurse came nearer and began to fidget with the pillows.
“I’ll have to get you to leave now, young man,” she said. “The doctor will be here in a moment.”
“Take care of yourself, Teddy,” smiled the girl, waving her hand feebly as he tore himself away. “Touch wood as you go out.”
She set her teeth for the doctor’s visit, and said not a word until he had finished his examination; but her black eyes studied his face in an agony of suspense. A momentary smile, accompanied by a raising of his bushy, gray eyebrows, gave her the cue.
“Doctor, will I get well?” she asked almost under her breath.
“Why, of course,” replied the doctor. “As well as ever you were, I’m hoping.”
“But—but will I be ugly?”
“Little Miss Vanity!” grinned the doctor. “You ought to be thankful you have a breath left in your body. No, you won’t be ugly, if you mean disfigured. Of course there’ll be scars—”
“Do you think I’ll be able to ride again?” persisted the girl.
“I don’t know why you shouldn’t be able to ride; but I guess when you set eyes on the track you won’t want to. As for the rest, the cuts are pretty clean and not deep. I should say, on the whole, that you’ll have to look fairly close into the glass to see the one on your cheek, and your hair will cover the scalp-wound. The others aren’t anywhere to prevent you from wearing low-cut frocks. Now, are you satisfied, daughter of Eve?”
“Yes, thank you, Doctor. If the bone in my arm mends all right, that is. It’s hurting a whole lot to-day.”
“That means precisely that it is mending,” said the doctor as he picked up his bag to depart. “And now that you’re sure of your precious beauty, you’d better try to get some sleep.”
Sadie closed her eyes obediently, but her brows were knitted in thought. When the doctor had moved on, she looked up again with a sigh.
“Nurse, the light bothers my eyes, and I can’t turn my head,” she said.“Will you please pull down the blind?”
WHILEit is still young and overflowing with vitality, the human frame is able to summon life forces to its aid that can sometimes knit up broken bones and torn tissues as though by magic power. Teddy Rocco had seen various striking demonstrations of this quality in his racing career, but it had never occurred to him that a mere girl might possess it. He was greatly astonished, therefore, on meeting Ryan at a southern track, to hear that Sadie was once more riding for the “Flying Centaur” people.
“She don’t look a cent worse,” said Ryan. “Same little red suit, same little smile, same throaty little voice. And she’s making good, too. Been all over the West, and packed up a nice parcel of the long green. Not that she’ll ever need it; that kid will marry a million some day. One of the guys that was following her round was big rich.”
All that day Teddy rode entirely without judgment, and his old daredevil dash was not in him. In fact, that was becoming his consistent experience. Every time he would set his teeth and let his engine out to the last notch to pass the man in front, a blind seemed to shut down in front of him, or a little red figure would appear stretched on the track ahead, and he would let the chance slip by.
Consequently, when he returned to give exhibitions at the Devil’s Soup-plate, he was no nearer the white southern garage of his dreams than he had been the previous season. And the life of a speed-man is short,—much shorter, as a rule, than that of a boxing champion.
That garage, gleaming in the sun, with a palm or two in front and lizards basking in its shadow, had been Teddy’s lodestar for years; but on the first day of their meeting, Sadie’s brisk little figure had slipped into the picture, and he could not imagine the place now without seeing her standing at the door in a white dress, with no hat, but with a bunch of crimson flowers at her waist.
“This is my finish,” he told Santoni; “I’m a has-been. I’ve started seein’ things. I won’t ride after this season.”
Then he learned, with a shock, that Sadie was to be his racing-companion once more. She had walked into Santoni’s office and offered to give exhibitions on the old terms; and Santoni, being too good a business man, and too stout withal to stand on his head for joy, had shaken her by both hands, and spent an afternoon in devising a poster more sensational than any he had previously compassed.
When he wrote “America’s Foremost Queen of the Track” it seemed to him weak and colorless; and he threw adjectives into it until Sadie had a title as long as her arm.
Teddy slipped away and hid himself when he saw her arrive, with a knot of admirers, to survey the track. An expensively tailored costume emphasized her recent prosperity, and her obvious gaiety of manner was like a snub. When she laughingly pointed out to her companions the precise spot on which she had struck the providential wire fence, Teddy shuddered and turned away.
In the garage he came upon a mechanic overhauling her mount, an excessively powerful machine with four cylinders, its frame enameled bright scarlet, and nickeled in an unusual degree. It looked a sufficiently dangerous mount for a strong and skilful man racing on a spacious track. He shrank from seeing Sadie ride it in the restricted circle of the soup-plate.
When they appeared on the track in the evening, however, he could no longer ignore her presence. Indeed, she came behind him and slapped him gaily on the shoulder, such a trim, joyously captivating midget, in her scarlet leather motor-jacket, that his heart leaped at the sight of her.
“Who said I couldn’t come back, Teddy Rocco?” she asked, and the familiar, curious huskiness of her voice thrilled him so that he could not reply.
“I’m going to make you look like a never-was to-night, Teddy-Eddy,” she went on, with a sort of malicious exhilaration in her manner. “I expect you’re still single?”
“Oh, cut it out, Sadie!” he pleaded. “I never done you any harm.”
“Do you love me as much as ever?” asked little Miss Simmons, with an unwonted feline delight in cruelty. “The villain thought he had the poor little girl just where he wanted her, didn’t he? But the kind, handsome doctor rescued her all right; and now she’s going to make the villain look like thirty cents.”
“You’ll have to go some,” said Teddy, grinning miserably, as he stooped to adjusthis carbureter. When he mounted his machine he was in a white-hot, searing temper. If all the women in the world had been laid side by side on an endless track, he would have ridden over their necks at that moment with an exquisite pleasure.
But though he rode with the courage of bitterness and desperation, he soon found that Sadie had the heels of him. Once or twice when she shot past him with an almost crazy recklessness, the thought flashed through his mind that an imperceptible swerve of his handle-bar would all but inevitably end both their lives, and he weakly throttled down his engine, fearful lest the subconscious working of his tortured mind might communicate a tremor to his arm; and every time that Sadie passed him with a vicious spurt of her diabolical scarlet mount, he caught in her eye a gleam of impish triumph.
It was when he found himself riding behind her, with his front wheel a hand’s-breadth from her hind one, that he realized how utterly his nerve had failed. Ever and again, under his front wheel appeared a white, blood-flecked little face, with eyelashes that quivered in agony. With a sob, he cut out his engine and slid slowly down the track.
“I’m through,” he said to a mechanic who seized his cycle. “I don’t think I’ll need her again.”
For a long time he sat in the gloom of the garage in dumb agony, and even there the rip of Sadie’s powerful engine followed him above the cheers of the crowd. Now and then, in the midst of the uproar, he could hear the voice of Santoni yelling the laps; then there was a final outburst of cheering. When it died away, Sadie’s motor was silent. A moment later, as it seemed to him, the door of the workshop slammed, and he looked up, to see her standing before him, her black eyes dancing in that strange exhilaration that he had noted before, her chest heaving with excitement under the vivid scarlet of her jacket.
“I’ve shaded your track record, Teddy Rocco!” she cried. “I’ve beaten you to bits! Now say I can’t come back! I’ve come, haven’t I?”
“I guess,” said Teddy, humbly.
“And what’s more, I’ve cleaned up three thousand dollars this season, and I haven’t a scar left on me that you could see in this light. But you’ll have to take my word for that. We can talk on level terms now, Teddy. I’m as good as ever I was, don’t you think?”
“I expect so,” stammered Teddy. “It’s me that’s in bad. I’ve lost heart, Sadie, and my nerve’s gone. I’ve been scared a time too many.”
“Then get your machine and rush me away,” cried Sadie, “and marry me the first minute you can; and we’ll get out of this to Florida in the morning, and see the garage and the sunshine and the butterflies. It’s a square deal now, Teddy-Eddy. Stand up and kiss your honey-bird, you brave, silly, big-hearted, mush-headed little man; for I love you so much I couldn’t have offered you anything less, and I’ve waited so long, my heart feels like it will burst!”
Tailpiece, A GARAGE IN THE SUNSHINE