Part 28 (1/2)
”Then why did you----”
”Now you're bullying me, and you know that if the smart set isn't vicious, at least it's so sn.o.bbish that it can't see any----”
”Then it's wise to be sn.o.bbish, because if it did condescend----”
”I won't stand people talking about condescending----”
”Would you mind not shouting so?”
”Very well! I'll keep still!”
Silence again, while both of them looked unhappy, and tried to remember just what they had been fighting about. They did not at first notice a small red car larruping gaily over the road beneath the ledge, though the driver was a pink-haired man in a green coat. He was almost gone before Milt choked, ”It's Pinky!”
”Pink! Pinky!” he bellowed.
Pinky looked back but, instead of stopping, he sped up, and kept going.
CHAPTER XXI
THE MINE OF LOST SOULS
”That couldn't have been Pinky! Why! Why, the car he had was red,” cried Claire.
”Sure. The idiot's got hold of some barn paint somewhere, and tried to daub it over. He's trying to make a getaway with it!”
”We'll chase him. In my car.”
”Don't you mind?”
”Of course not. I do not give up my objections to the roughing philosophy, but---- You were right about these shoes---- Oh, don't leave me behind! Want to go along!”
These sentences she broke, scattered, and totally lost as she scrambled after him, down the rocks. He halted. His lips trembled. He picked her up, carried her down, hesitated a second while his face--curiously foreshortened as she looked up at it from his big arms--twisted with emotion. He set her down gently, and she climbed into the Gomez.
It seemed to her that he drove rather too carefully, too slowly. He took curves and corners evenly. His face was as empty of expression, as unmelodramatic, as that of a jitney driver. Then she looked at the speedometer. He was making forty-eight miles an hour down hill and forty to thirty on upgrades.
They were in sight of the fleeing Pinky in two miles. Pinky looked back; instantly was to be seen pulling his hat low, stooping over--the demon driver. Milt merely sat more erect, looked more bland and white-browed and steady.
The bug fled before them on a winding shelf road. It popped up a curve, then slowed down. ”He took it too fast. Poor Pink!” said Milt.
They gained on that upslope, but as the road dropped, the bug started forward desperately. Another car was headed toward them; was drawn to the side of the road, in one of the occasional widenings. Pinky pa.s.sed it so carelessly that, with crawling spine, Claire saw the outer wheels of the bug on the very edge of the road--the edge of a fifty-foot drop.
Milt went easily past the halted car--even waved his hand to the waiting driver.
This did not seem to Claire at all like the chase of a thief. She looked casually ahead at Pinky, as he whirled round an S-shaped curve on the downslope, then---- It was too quick to see what happened. The bug headed directly toward the edge of the road, shot out, went down the embankment, over and over. It lay absurdly upside-down, its m.u.f.fler and brake-rods showing in place of the seat and hood.
Milt quite carefully stopped the Gomez. The day was still--just a breathing of running water in the deep gully. The topsy-turvy car below them was equally still; no sight of Pinky, no sound.
The gauche boy gone from him, Milt took her hand, pressed it to his cheek. ”Claire! You're here! You might have gone with him, to make room---- Oh, I was bullying you because I was bullying myself! Trying to make myself tell you--but oh, you know, you know! Can you stand going down there? I hate to have you, but you may be needed.”
”Yes. I'll come,” she whispered.