sity of Califon 
 them Regional 
 t>rary Facility

 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 WOT. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES
 
 THE CAR AND 
 THE LADY 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY F. MEGARGEL 
 
 AND 
 
 GRACE SARTWELL MASON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY 
 
 1908
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY 
 THE BAKER AND TAYLOR COMPANY 
 
 Published, August, 1908 
 
 THE PREMIER PRESS 
 NEW YORK
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 THE true history of a transcontinental 
 automobile race underlies nearly every detail 
 of the following story. It is a romance seen 
 through the log-book of an actual journey. 
 Hence the particulars of equipment and the 
 description of difficulties met and overcome. 
 The authors hope that, with the progress of 
 good highways across this fascinating con 
 tinent of ours, more motorists may feel the 
 lure of the American road. If this class of 
 traveler finds in "The Car and the Lady" a 
 timely word which will make the way easier 
 they will feel that they have been justified in 
 supplementing the purely romantic interest of 
 their story with wisdom gained in the school 
 of experience. 
 
 2131519
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY
 
 The Car and the Lady 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 AT a wide front window of the Al 
 bright drawing-room Jerry Fleming 
 stationed himself as if determined to 
 become a fixture of that pleasant spot. An 
 awning kept out the glare of the August 
 afternoon; the breeze came in through a 
 green screen of climbing vines and potted 
 geraniums; behind this shaded window the 
 noises of the avenue were less obtrusive, 
 though the window stood wide open to the 
 out-of-doors. By long habit Jerry Fleming 
 knew exactly the spot where one should stand 
 to command the street below. He planted 
 himself at this point, his hands thrust in his 
 pockets, his good-looking young face gloom 
 ily set, obstinacy in his athletic shoulders. The 
 housemaid who had ushered him in looked at 
 his back. There was a secret sympathy in her 
 Irish eyes. She coughed discreetly. 
 
 "How long ago did Miss Betty go out?" 
 he asked, without taking his eyes from the 
 street.
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 She told him two hours; and moved toward 
 the door. 
 
 "Ah . . . when do you expect your 
 sister from Ireland, Nora?" 
 
 She came back, her Irish heart touched to 
 confidences. 
 
 "An sure at last, Mr. Jerry, I ve sint her 
 the tickets! Next mont it is she ll be here. 
 Miss Betty says she can stay with me till she 
 finds a place!" 
 
 "That s good of Miss Betty, . . . 
 where did you say she s gone, Nora?" 
 
 Nora twinkled and looked at him with un 
 fathomable sympathy. " She s gone out in a 
 grand new automobile, sir one the Italian 
 gintleman sint round. She she s been out 
 in it every day for a week, sir. She s like a 
 colleen with a new toy. An it isn t blamin 
 her I d be, either. The iligance of that car, 
 sir the red leather cushions the brass, and 
 thim shiny things the 
 
 Jerry Fleming made a movement of pro 
 found disgust. Gloom of a deeper shade set 
 tled over his face. " Brass and shiny things! " 
 he muttered. " That s all a girl knows about 
 an automobile! Brass " and here he stopped 
 to listen to the musical notes of a Gabriel 
 horn, which, backed up by the exhaust of a 
 
 2
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 powerful four-cylinder motor, sounded above 
 the noises of the avenue. 
 
 "That s her!" Nora cried, and hastened 
 into the hall. 
 
 Jerry leaned eagerly out between two ge 
 raniums and scanned the street. Around the 
 corner swept a car with rakish bonnet and a 
 conspicuous expensiveness. It drew up at the 
 curb as impressively as an ocean liner making 
 her dock. It stood palpitating in a high-bred 
 and elegant sort of manner while an exceed 
 ingly pretty girl stepped out. Jerry s gaze 
 devoured the girl, but it must be confessed 
 only for an instant. It was the car that drew 
 his eye, a critical, motor-wise eye, and held it 
 until Betty Albright threw open the drawing- 
 room door. 
 
 She hastened across the room with a frank 
 hand extended. 
 
 " Why, Jerry, old fellow ! It s been an age 
 since I ve seen you! Where ve you been, and 
 
 how " she broke off suddenly to dart to 
 
 the window. 
 
 "Jerry, quick! Before Pierson drives off! 
 Isn t it a beauty! We ve been out Riverside 
 Drive, around the Monument and back 
 through the park, twenty miles in thirty-two 
 minutes!"
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Jerry put his hands in his pockets and 
 stared gloomily over her shoulder at the car. 
 
 "Humph! . . . weight all up front. 
 I suppose you went chugging down into every 
 hole in the road between here and the Boule 
 vard." 
 
 "No, we didn t!" she retorted. "At least 
 there weren t any holes. I m too truthful; 
 I must say the roads were pretty smooth." 
 
 "Exactly! Just like the Continental roads 
 this car was built for. You try to run that 
 glittering thing across country over West 
 ern roads, for instance, and you d find it would 
 be like trying to sail a boat with the ballast all 
 up in the bows ! You d find it " 
 
 The girl lifted up two mocking hands. 
 " Now, Jerry, spare me ! I know you ve got 
 just one motor-idea in your poor head, but 
 really you can t expect me to swallow it, too! 
 Now can you? Here I ve been having the 
 most heavenly spins in a love of an Italian 
 car can you expect me to turn around and 
 pick flaws in it?" 
 
 He looked disgusted at the very name. " I 
 tell you, Betty, the Italian car is all right for 
 good roads, but how would it show up west of 
 Chicago, say?" 
 
 Betty stared. "How do you know?" she
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY. 
 
 cried defiantly. " Have you ever driven your 
 car west of Chicago?" 
 
 "No, but I could!" He threw back his 
 head and laughed boyishly. There was the 
 sparkle of an interesting idea in his eyes. 
 " Say, Betty, wouldn t it be nuts to race Van- 
 nuccini across to Portland, Oregon? Can t 
 you see him in the dust of the Red Desert with 
 that gilt-edged car of his? Or asking for ver 
 mouth in Medicine Bow, Wyoming? Oh, by; 
 Jove! wouldn t I enjoy that!" 
 
 His laugh rang out, and she joined him; 
 but it was noticeable that she did not pursue 
 the subject. Indeed, the color had mounted 
 perceptibly in her cheeks, and she hinted, a 
 little stiffly, that she found it difficult to im 
 agine either one of them pegging across the 
 continent. Then she laughed. 
 
 "Come now, Jerry," she said, "we won t 
 argue about things when we haven t seen each 
 other for six weeks, shall we? Find a com 
 fortable chair and tell me all about yourself. 
 You ve been up in Michigan, your mother 
 told me; and you never came to talk things 
 over, or say good-by, or anything. I began 
 to think maybe you d found another pal, 
 Jerry." 
 
 As she talked she was removing her veil. 
 
 5
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 There were yards of it, but she emerged finally 
 with a lovely color and a disheveled head of 
 hair that seemed to have caught all the sun 
 light of the sunny August day. She was 
 splendidly alive ; her tall young figure was full 
 of graceful strength; she walked as if every 
 step was a joy; the grasp of her hand was as 
 frank as a boy s ; her fine gray eyes looked out 
 on the world with a healthy optimism. 
 
 "I hadn t," he answered briefly, from the 
 window. He was looking at the car again, 
 critically. "I ll bet Vannuccini s engine just 
 eats gasoline when he gets off the boulevards." 
 
 The girl moved across the room to where 
 he stood. She looked up at him with an amused 
 lift of her eyebrows. "See here, Jerry Flem 
 ing," she said suddenly, "what s the matter 
 with you ? Why you absurd boy ! you aren t 
 jealous of the new Superba, are you?" 
 
 She faced him squarely, her head thrown 
 back a little, her gray eyes keenly questioning, 
 a shade of disapproval in her glance. " There s 
 one thing I ve always believed of you, Jerry," 
 she went on. "I ve always thought you a real 
 sportsman. Do you think it s sportsmanlike 
 to refuse a word of approval when another 
 man does a bit of good work?"
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 A quick flush mounted to Jerry s cheeks. 
 He walked once around the room and when he 
 came back to lean against the window in which 
 she was sitting, there was a new expression in 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Betty," he said, "you re such a square sort 
 of a girl yourself, you can t understand how a 
 fellow like myself has to struggle to keep 
 his mouth shut when he sees things going on 
 that he would just like to to knock!" 
 
 A little cool shadow settled over the girl s 
 face. She had a way of lifting her chin and 
 looking off at some indefinite spot in space 
 when she disapproved of anything. 
 
 " I suppose," she said, "you mean Mr. Van- 
 nuccini?" 
 
 Jerry reddened, but this time his clean-cut 
 jaw set stubbornly. 
 
 Yes," he said, " I mean Vannuccini. Betty, 
 it s mighty hard to be generous and sports 
 manlike and all that kind of thing when a 
 fellow has cut you out of your work and and 
 when it looks as if he was after the the girl 
 you- 
 
 Betty suddenly laughed. Her laughter was 
 capable of as much meaning as her charming 
 face; it could be as disconcerting as her up-
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 lifted chin. It put Mr. Jerry Fleming neatly 
 in his place, as a person who had presumed, 
 just a trifle. Jerry colored, but he could only 
 look helplessly at her at the lovely curve of 
 her chin as she lifted it, at the alluring way she 
 crinkled up her eyes when she laughed. An 
 old, desperate speculation came into his mind: 
 what would she do if he should seize her firmly 
 if he should stop her laughter with a kiss? 
 
 "Betty!" he cried, "don t laugh at me! 
 I m in earnest this time." 
 
 She looked contrite. " Dear Jerry ! I won t 
 laugh at you any more, if you won t take 
 things for granted. Now, tell me all about it. 
 I thought you would surely come to tell me 
 why you left the company; but you didn t, 
 and I had to get all my news from Dad. He 
 was furious, Jerry! You know Dad " 
 
 "I m afraid I do," he interrupted with a 
 rueful grin. " He hasn t much use for me. 
 has he?" 
 
 She smiled at him frankly. " Less now than 
 ever! You see, Jerry, Dad s a man who- has 
 made a success by sticking to one thing like a 
 dog to a bone. A test of character with Dad 
 is whether a man sticks or whether he whiffles 
 about, as he calls it. Now, he s convinced since 
 you left the Superba people that you re a 
 
 8
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 hopeless whiffler; says no young man in his 
 right mind would leave an old, successful com 
 pany just to air his own ideas." 
 
 Fleming s boyish face took on an expres 
 sion of obstinacy she had never seen there 
 before; she looked at him with a new inter 
 est. 
 
 You don t understand the situation, 
 Betty," he said quietly. "When the Superba 
 people adopted Vannuccini s designs for their 
 new model, it made it impossible for me to 
 stay in their drafting-room any longer." 
 
 "But, why?" 
 
 " Because I should have to give up my own 
 design if I stayed ; I should have to make cars 
 after another man s model, and I couldn t do 
 that, Betty. You see," he added simply, "I 
 believe in my own design and I don t believe 
 in Vannuccini s." 
 
 The girl looked at him thoughtfully. " But, 
 Jerry," she said slowly, " are you sure you are 
 right? Mr. Vannuccini is known all over Eu 
 rope as a motorist, his models are used by half 
 the big factories over there. Father thinks 
 he s the coming designer of automobiles. You 
 know, Jerry, you re not a Methuseleh or a 
 Solomon and you ve well, you ve had some 
 pretty; wild flights, now, haven t you? " 
 
 9
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Fleming laughed. " I suppose you mean 
 that little air-ship venture last summer?" 
 
 ; Yes, that, and others a whole string of 
 them since you left college! Do you mind 
 telling me what you propose to do now, Don 
 Quixote?" 
 
 His downcast expression vanished. He 
 thrust his hands into his pockets and his face 
 became confident and eager. "I m going to 
 make the great American car, my girl! I m 
 going to show this country and the Italians! 
 that the American manufacturer is the one 
 who understands American roads. I m going 
 to make a car with a double-opposed engine, 
 amidships in the body with a piston stroke so 
 long that it will climb the rocks in a Maine 
 pasture and eat up a New York State snow 
 drift a car that will leave your Italian four- 
 cylinder swell far to the rear on the average 
 American road!" 
 
 "That s a large order," she smiled, "and 
 will take money." 
 
 " I know," he said. " You remember grand 
 father left me twenty-five thousand? Well, 
 that s gone in. Walters and Cushman and I 
 have bought a plant up in Michigan small 
 affair, of course ; but a start. They ve allowed 
 me an equal amount of stock for my design, 
 
 10
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and we re going to show people, your father 
 included, what a spunky, live, all- American 
 car can do next year!" 
 
 Betty s eyes sparkled. "Good for you, 
 Jerry!" she cried. "It will make Dad furi 
 ous; but I like it! I like you when you talk 
 that way! I like a man that has never-say- 
 die for his motto, anyway. Here s my] 
 hand!" 
 
 She laughingly held out her firm little hand. 
 Fleming took it in his large sunburnt one and 
 looked at it tenderly. As he stood beside her 
 chair, he himself was very well worth looking 
 at, with his clean-cut eager face, and his ath 
 letic shoulders. 
 
 " I wish you were giving it to me for keeps, 
 Betty," he said, soberly. "I d take mighty 
 good care of it. I d " 
 
 She shook her head. " This is the nine 
 teenth time," she said, lightly. " You know on 
 the last occasion you promised you wouldn t 
 do it again not for a year at least. I thought 
 by that time there would be another girl, 
 Jerry." 
 
 "I knew better," he said. "Why, Betty, 
 you dear! I ve been in love with you ever 
 since Miss Harvey s dancing class, when you 
 wore those two molasses candy braids down 
 
 11
 
 THE CAR AND THE 
 
 your back. Do you remember? There s never 
 been another girl since, and there never will 
 be another, Betty. Look here, dear there s 
 something I came up here this afternoon to 
 ask you. I know it s the nineteenth time, but 
 isn t there any hope for me, Betty? I m go 
 ing to leave next week for the factory ; I won t 
 be seeing you very often now and I could 
 work like twenty men if I could only have one 
 spark of encouragement from you, dear. 
 Can t you give me a little bit of hope, Betty?" 
 
 The girl looked at him with a troubled ex 
 pression in her candid gray eyes. 
 
 "Jerry," she said, "I like you awfully; but 
 somehow I never can take you quite seriously. 
 You see I m Dad s daughter. Dad and I 
 have always been pals and what he thinks I 
 think, because I believe in him. I know he s 
 crusty, Jerry, and he s maybe not always so 
 polite as he might be, but he s the straightest, 
 finest man I know, and I can t help but re 
 spect his opinions. He I must be truthful, 
 mustn t I? he doesn t believe in you, Jerry; 
 says you haven t made good - " 
 
 "But, Betty, don t you believe in me? I m 
 going to make good now. If I knew I was 
 working for you I could do anything, dear 
 little girl!" 
 
 12
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 She looked at him gravely. You must do 
 something first" she said. "No woman can 
 supply a man with backbone and the power to 
 stick. You show me first!" she added smil 
 ingly; and Jerry remarked how very like her 
 father s was Betty Albright s square little 
 chin. But there was something behind her 
 words which set his blood to galloping. He 
 caught her hand in an eager clasp. 
 
 "If I show you, Betty," he whispered, "if 
 I make good will you marry me will you, 
 dearest?" 
 
 For the least fraction of a second she 
 swayed toward him; then with an elusive 
 laugh she fluttered away to the deep embrasure 
 of a window overlooking the street. Flem 
 ing s face lost its glow, but he followed her 
 resolutely, and taking hold of her shoulders 
 turned her face toward his. 
 
 " It isn t Vannuccini, is it, Betty? " he asked, 
 his voice dropping. 
 
 She turned away from him, but not before 
 he had seen the faintest color rise in her cheeks. 
 
 " I don t know," she said. " It may be Mr. 
 Vannuccini and it may be you! No, you re 
 not to have my hand on any such slight pre 
 text. It wouldn t do, anyway, for Signor 
 Vannuccini himself is coming up the avenue ! " 
 
 13
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 NO shop talk!" Betty had warned 
 him swiftly as she moved across the 
 room to give her hand to the last 
 arrival. 
 
 The injunction was not necessary, for the 
 Italian s drawing-room manner always threw 
 Jerry Fleming into a state of dumb rage. 
 When Vannuccini bent over Miss Albright s 
 hand with a murmur of pleasure, Fleming felt 
 moved to retire into a remote corner and kick 
 the furniture. He was fathoms deep in love 
 with Betty Albright; but if he had practiced 
 for a month he could not have expressed as 
 much admiration in a long speech as the Italian 
 had just conveyed in a handshake. 
 
 And he hated tea. To stand and balance a 
 fiendishly slippery cup and saucer, trying not 
 to look ferocious, reduced him to a state of 
 smoldering irritation in which he might at 
 any moment forsake the social amenities and 
 become the primitive man, openly casting de 
 fiance in the teeth of his rival. 
 
 " Please sit down, both of you," said Betty, 
 scenting danger. But Jerry, monumentally 
 
 14
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 dignified, would not sit down as long as Van- 
 nuccini stood; Vannuccini knew he showed to 
 advantage standing, and so they balanced their 
 teacups on opposite sides of the table. 
 
 "I believe I had the pleasure of watching 
 you trying out a new car on the Boulevard 
 this morning, monsieur," remarked Vannuc 
 cini, affably. 
 
 :< Very likely," returned Fleming, briefly. 
 
 The Italian s eyebrows lifted the least frac 
 tion of an inch. He turned toward Betty 
 w r ith a movement that had the effect of a toler 
 ant shrug. Betty felt herself grow warm. 
 She was ashamed of Fleming s brusquerie 
 and deep in her heart ashamed of herself for 
 being ashamed. But the woman is not born 
 who does not like the man she admires to have 
 plenty of savoir faire. Vannuccini was a re 
 sourceful, polished cosmopolite. His man 
 ners, moreover, were like his clothes the best 
 that could be manufactured, and always skill 
 fully assumed with regard to time and place. 
 In the morning business hours he wore Eng 
 lish tweeds and a hearty frankness; at dinner 
 with a heavy stockholder he glistened in silky 
 broadcloth and a deferential wit; at afternoon 
 tea with ladies (he never used the word wom 
 en) his frock-coat, his boutonmere, his gaiters 
 
 15
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and his manner were all Italian, subtly caress 
 ing, with a delicate suggestion of melancholy 
 and a soup9on of daring. The difference be 
 tween the two men was like the difference in 
 their hands Vannuccini s slender, nervous, ex 
 quisitely manicured; Fleming s sinewy and 
 strong, brown from the sun, the nails broken 
 and stained with the work of a man who not 
 only drives his own car but who can rebuild it 
 from its parts. 
 
 "And you, mademoiselle, did the new Su- 
 perba please you this afternoon?" Vannuc- 
 cini was asking. 
 
 Immensely!" cried Betty, all the more 
 fervently because she was aware of Fleming s 
 dour glance upon her. Signor Vannuccini ex 
 pressed himself as delighted; he had come, he 
 said, to propose an excursion through the 
 Catskills for the following week. Did Miss 
 Albright think she could persuade her father 
 and her friend Mrs. Whitman to undertake a 
 little tour with him in the new car? 
 
 At this point Jerry put down his cup and 
 began to walk about the room. 
 
 "I am sure I can! " declared Betty, with an 
 eye to Jerry s back. " How very nice of you 
 to think of it!" 
 
 "It is mademoiselle who confers a happi- 
 16
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 ness," murmured Vannuccini. " Shall we say 
 Tuesday of next week? We can explore your 
 beautiful Catskills and return by way of the 
 Delaware Water Gap, if you like." 
 
 " It sounds lovely ; but I positively must be 
 back in town Friday 
 
 "But, of course!" cried Vannuccini gaily, 
 "with the new Superba that is entirely pos 
 sible. On Friday at any hour you name I can 
 restore you to your friends." 
 
 Jerry returned to the tea table; there was 
 the light of battle in his eye. You can t do 
 it," he remarked, bluntly. 
 
 Betty bit her lip; and Vannuccini turned 
 upon him a politely incredulous eye. 
 
 "You think not, monsieur? I am interested 
 to know why 
 
 " Because your car is not built for the con 
 ditions you will find just now in the Catskills. 
 We have had a rainy month; the roads are 
 heavy. Your car weighs too much. With the 
 engine in front it is not balanced for the kind 
 of roads you will find up there. You might 
 make the run in six days, but you can t make 
 it in three." 
 
 Vannuccini had opened his lips to reply 
 when a dry chuckle from the doorway inter 
 rupted him. Betty s father, Hiram D. Al- 
 
 17
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 bright himself, had entered in time to catch 
 the last of the conversation. He was a small 
 man, with a large head, and incredibly keen 
 eyes under a gray penthouse of eyebrow. His 
 glance at Jerry was like the flash of polished 
 steel. 
 
 " Perhaps you could do it yourself, Flem 
 ing," he said dryly. 
 
 A flush burned through the tan on Flem 
 ing s cheek. " I am sure I could, sir," he said 
 steadily. "I ve just made the Catskill run, 
 and I am certain the new Superba, with its 
 engine under the bonnet, cannot take those bad 
 roads at the speed my Nero made over them 
 last week." 
 
 "Don t agree with you," said the old man 
 brusquely, with a gesture that disposed of 
 Fleming and his assumptions for good and all. 
 He refused Betty s offer of a cup of tea, and 
 would have gone on his way without further 
 .parley, when Vannuccini s next words stopped 
 him. 
 
 "Perhaps Mr. Fleming will do Mr. Al 
 bright and myself the honor to prove what he 
 has just said about his car?" His tone cased 
 the remark in silk. " I am at your service any 
 time, monsieur." He turned to smile at Betty. 
 "It would be amusing, would it not, made- 
 
 18
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 moiselle? a little race from here to shall we 
 say Buffalo, and back? " 
 
 There was something in the tone and in the 
 Italian s glance at Betty, as if they two had 
 found an affair of quiet amusement, that sent 
 the blood to Fleming s head. He was aware 
 of an ironical half contempt in the way Hiram 
 Albright looked at him; he saw Betty color 
 as if she already expected him to fail. The 
 fighting spirit in him rose. 
 
 " So short a run," he said as calmly as he 
 could. " Make it from New York to Port 
 land, Oregon, and it will be worth while." 
 
 Vannuccini stared. "You are ambitious," 
 he said. " May I ask what you have to stake 
 on such a contest?" 
 
 It was not so much a question as a veiled 
 taunt. A silence fell on the room. Mr. Al 
 bright watched them, bright-eyed and keen; 
 Vannuccini looked at Fleming, and Fleming 
 looked at Betty. Her eyes were bright with 
 some enigmatic excitement. Fleming knew in 
 that instant that he stood on trial to win or 
 lose the respect of this girl who was more to 
 him than anything else in the world. For an 
 instant he felt the heart-clutching fear of the 
 player who puts everything he possesses on the 
 red or the black. Then his brain cleared. 
 
 19
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " I will stake my interest in our new factory 
 against $25,000," he said, " on the outcome of 
 a trial between your Superba and my Nero, 
 the route to be from New York to Portland. 
 Do you take me?" 
 
 The two men opposite him looked at each 
 other briefly. " Agreed ! " said Mr. Albright 
 with a dry laugh. " It will be the best kind 
 of a try-out for the new Superba, and will 
 settle several things." 
 
 His glance rested humorously for an instant 
 on his daughter ; then he said : " Get me a 
 pencil and note book, daughter. We may as 
 well agree on the conditions of the race be 
 fore Fleming changes his mind." 
 
 "I shall not change my mind," said Jerry 
 quietly. " Shall we say the fifteenth of Au 
 gust for the start? " 
 
 20
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 MANY times before the day set for the 
 beginning of the transcontinental 
 run Fleming saw in his mind s eye 
 the flushed, triumphant face of Betty Al 
 bright as she had whispered to him after the 
 signing of his compact with Vannuccini: 
 " I m glad they couldn t bluff you out, Jerry. 
 You ve got your chance, now." 
 
 Yes, he had got his chance; and he was 
 straining every nerve and sinew, every ounce 
 of brain, all the ingenuity and foresight he 
 possessed to make the best of it. There had 
 been a lively quarter of an hour with his 
 partners, Walters and Cushman, when he laid 
 before them immediately upon his arrival in 
 Lansing the thing he had undertaken to ac 
 complish. They had not hesitated to tell him 
 they considered him "up in the air! " When 
 sarcasm and angry protest failed they fell 
 back on a line of patient reasoning. In the 
 midst of their eloquence Fleming had said, 
 decisively : 
 
 " Look here, you fellows don t know a good 
 thing when you see it. We ve started a new 
 factory; and we ve got the whole field to con- 
 
 21
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 quer, haven t we? The big fellows and the 
 old-established makers have their hundreds of 
 thousands to spend in display advertising for 
 next season, while we well, you know what 
 kind of a splash we can make with our present 
 resources. The Superba people are prepar 
 ing to fight us tooth and nail with their new 
 model; and we ve got the foreign machines 
 to buck against as well. It strikes me that 
 what we want right here is publicity, if we re 
 to get in out of the rain and more publicity 
 than we can afford to buy through the thou- 
 sand-dollar-a-page magazines, too! Now, see 
 here: this is my scheme. . . ." 
 
 He drew a chair in front of a map stretched 
 on his desk, but Walters, whose mind had am 
 bled along just a little behind the argument, 
 interrupted with an exasperated: 
 
 " But the risk, Fleming the risk! If you 
 lose this race and you will, you know! you 
 let this Italian in for a controlling interest in 
 our factory. Good Lord! you might as well 
 sell out to the Superba people and be done 
 with it!" 
 
 Fleming looked at his senior partner; his 
 eyes were steel colored. 
 
 " I don t calculate on losing not this trip, 
 Walters," he said. 
 
 22
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 And Cushman, who spoke little during the 
 interview, had looked at their junior partner 
 keenly. A speculative interest began to 
 gather in his eyes. 
 
 "Wait a minute, Walters," he said quietly. 
 " I believe Jerry s got hold of something 
 worth listening to." 
 
 Coming up on the boat to Detroit the night 
 before, Fleming had been so full of his pro 
 ject that sleep was out of the question. In 
 the starlit night he had paced up and down 
 the deck, every scene in the Albright drawing- 
 room reenacted in his mind. In that quiet 
 hour he measured all that he risked; and he 
 measured though he felt it to be immeasur 
 able what might be his if he but risked suc 
 cessfully. For in a day he seemed to have 
 grown from a boy to a man, with a man s 
 judgment and a man s insight. He under 
 stood as he had never done in all his boyish 
 wooing the need in Betty Albright s nature 
 which demanded that the man she gave herself 
 to should "make good." 
 
 In the darkness he smiled at the words and 
 at the remembrance of the fearless lift of her 
 square little chin. Well, if it was in him to 
 
 23
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 do it, he was going to make good for Betty s 
 sake. What risks he ran in this most serious 
 issue of his life he would not dwell upon, 
 though the facts were brought home to him 
 by an accidental meeting on the boat with an 
 old friend, a man many years his senior, who 
 out of a long and varied experience as a mo 
 torist gave him a frank opinion of the under 
 taking. 
 
 "Well, your nerve is perfect," Barry, his 
 friend, had laughed. "Do you happen to be 
 up on the transcontinental route? No? And 
 you ve put up your twenty horse-power Nero 
 against a four-cylinder, forty horse-power 
 machine! Why, my boy, on the good roads 
 between New York and Chicago your Italian 
 car will leave you so far behind you ll never 
 catch up." 
 
 Fleming looked unconvinced. " I may 
 have to take his dust on the good roads," he 
 rejoined, " but don t forget this run is across 
 Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. My car is 
 a bulldog on bad roads, and with a Schebler 
 carburetor a steep gradient is a picnic to that 
 Nero Mountaineer of mine. That s why I 
 stipulated the finish should be in Portland, 
 Oregon. Where I m going to win out over 
 that gilt-edged car of Vannuccini s is there, 
 
 24
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 in the climb over the Cascades, or working 
 through the desert in Wyoming." 
 
 The older man admitted that there was some 
 truth in this view; but he added, seriously: 
 
 You don t know what you re in for, Jerry. 
 West of Cheyenne there are two-hundred-mile 
 stretches where you won t find enough sweet 
 water to fill a teacup ; where the trail fades out 
 and you will have to chop your way through 
 sage brush. You ll sleep in your clothes many 
 a night and go hungry many a day. And 
 then, when you ve made perhaps three-quar 
 ters of the way, a broken axle or cracked cylin 
 der may lose you your race by twenty-four 
 hours. You take too many chances, my boy; 
 better give it up, that s my advice to you." 
 
 Fleming rose from his chair to stare down 
 at the dark rush of water past the bows. 
 
 There s no giving up for me, now," he said. 
 
 This thing has got hold of me. I m not 
 afraid of hardships and I believe in my car. 
 I ve got to win out. To me it it means a 
 good deal more than twenty-five thousand. If 
 I lose, I lose something I ve wanted ever since 
 I was a boy going to Prep school and Miss 
 Harvey s dancing class!" 
 
 He laughed as if half ashamed of his ad 
 mission; but he added, soberly: "Maybe you 
 
 25
 
 THE CAR 1 AND THE LADY 
 
 think I m an irresponsible fool to rush into this 
 thing, Barry, but I believe it s the best chance 
 of my life to show what s in me." 
 
 Tfee older; man was silent for a time, and 
 then he said slowly: 
 
 " Well, I guess there comes a time in every 
 man s life when it s wise to be foolish when 
 he s got to play high if he s to win the game. 
 If you re sure this is your chance, Jerry, take 
 it in the best style possible. Now, you ll want 
 a complete list of the equipment needed. I ll 
 get it for you from Whitman, who made the 
 transcontinental run in an Oldsmobile a couple 
 of years ago. Follow his advice; never neg 
 lect a detail; don t take anything for granted 
 and may the luck of the foolhardy go with 
 you!" 
 
 When he left the boat Fleming had felt 
 keyed up to a tremendous pitch of energy. It 
 was well that it should be so, for he had a 
 scant fortnight before him in which to attend 
 to a thousand details. Next in importance to 
 his interview with his partners was the choice 
 of a mechanic to go with him on the long drive. 
 On this point Fleming felt he had no need of 
 advice; he knew the man he wanted, and two 
 hours after he arrived in Lansing he was deep 
 in talk with a blue-eyed, sandy-haired young 
 
 26
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 fellow, who wore at the moment overalls and a 
 mechanic s jumper and listened eagerly to the 
 plans Fleming unfolded. 
 
 Sid Johnston, with his cheerful air of instant 
 readiness for love or war, was the ideal sharer 
 of such a venture as his employer proposed. 
 He knew and loved every inch of his car; he 
 was as sanguine as Fleming himself; he was 
 keen and resourceful, and Fleming knew one 
 occasion at least when Sid Johnston had shown 
 himself recklessly devoted to his employer s 
 cause. It was during a famous race that the 
 hattery box in Fleming s car had broken loose. 
 For forty miles, w r hile the car skidded and 
 swerved dangerously, Johnston had held the 
 box between his knees, averting a catastrophe 
 and making it possible for Fleming to come in 
 second at the finish. On that occasion a fran 
 tically cheering crowd had lifted the sandy- 
 haired little mechanic from the car, and Flem 
 ing felt that their enthusiasm was well merited. 
 As he had divided with Sid the triumphs of 
 that memorable contest, so he had shared with 
 him the adventures and vicissitudes of many 
 others. They had come to regard each other as 
 comrades in adventure rather than as employer 
 and emploj^ee. 
 
 When Sid listened to Fleming s account of 
 27
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 his new undertaking his eyes glistened with 
 approval. He heard the call of the road, and 
 instantly his mind leaped forward to grapple 
 with the problems that were as so many joys to 
 him. 
 
 "Say!" he exclaimed, "it s a sure thing! 
 I m with you, Boss. And I ve got an engine 
 down in the testing-room that s a little beauty. 
 Say, if you ll come down now we ll try it out 
 with the brake test. Why, it s a cinch what 
 we ll do with that engine in the old Moun 
 taineer! " 
 
 Thus, forty-eight hours after Fleming said 
 good-by to Betty Albright in New York, his 
 preparations for the race were well under way. 
 The choosing of the engine he was to use in 
 his car had been a crucial moment; for on the 
 perfection of this, the heart of his car, would 
 depend in a large measure his success or fail 
 ure. For this reason the commonly used 
 dynamo test was not depended upon. Under 
 Fleming s critical eye Johnston applied to en 
 gine after engine what automobilists call the 
 " brake test," in which by means of a long lever 
 a block of wood is forced down upon the fly 
 wheel of the engine; attached to this lever are 
 scales which record each added pound of re 
 sistance, and according as the engine runs 
 
 28
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 smoothly or "dies" under the test its power 
 and quality are recorded. 
 
 In the engine finally chosen Fleming felt 
 the utmost confidence. As he worked day by 
 day over each detail of his car and equipment 
 his spirits were high with the certainty that 
 with such a will to succeed and nothing left to 
 chance he could not fail. From early morn 
 ing till late at night he and Johnston worked, 
 testing the parts of his car as it was taken to 
 pieces and reassembled, studying the problem 
 of additional gasoline and water tanks, of 
 clearance and balance. In the frame of the car 
 was built a three-inch windlass, with a crank 
 and ratchet on either side and with two hun 
 dred feet of wire cable wound about the drum. 
 This part of their equipment would come into 
 play when there should be a steep river bank 
 to climb or an arroyo to get out of. 
 
 To lessen the dangers of mountain climbing 
 sharpened sprags were attached to the rear 
 axle and an emergency brake to the flywheel. 
 A cleverly constructed rack on the running- 
 board carried a pail and shovel, besides extra 
 gasoline and water tanks. A special device of 
 Fleming s was a set of sand-tires. Made of 
 canvas stuffed with cotton-waste they strapped 
 around the rims, the Goodrich pneumatics fill- 
 
 29
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 ing out the center of the sand-tires, thus giv 
 ing to each wheel a tread of several additional 
 inches. A pair of oil lamps and a six-inch 
 Solar searchlight connected to a double gen 
 erator were installed. On the dashboard were 
 placed a gradometer to register the percentage 
 of the grades and a Warner autometer to in 
 dicate the rate of speed and distance traveled. 
 
 Finally, every nut in the car was tightened 
 as much as possible without stripping the 
 threads, a hole drilled through the end of each 
 bolt and cotter pins inserted. Every pre 
 caution was taken, every ounce of ingenuity 
 the two men possessed was used to meet any 
 possible emergency; and Fleming felt the 
 pride of the successful shipbuilder as he super 
 intended the last bit of work on the car. 
 
 Three days before the fifteenth the Moun 
 taineer was shipped by express to New York. 
 After careful study of Whitman s suggestions 
 as to equipment Fleming drew up a list of the 
 articles to be stowed in the tonneau before they 
 left New York. For the sake of the motorist 
 who may be interested in the needs of the 
 transcontinental driver the list follows: 
 
 Rubber hats, shirts, gloves and hip boots; 
 high cut leather shoes, flannel shirts, sweaters, 
 army; blankets, leather coats and corduroy 
 
 30
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 trousers. Pail, axe, spade, coil of emergency 
 wire, rope, pulleys, State maps, repeating rifle, 
 Colt s automatic revolvers. Spit-fire spark 
 plugs, oil gun, blow torch, folding jack, extra 
 set wirings, short piece garden hose for repair 
 ing water pipes, Weed tire chains, pump, tire 
 irons, extra chain, monkey wrenches, pipe 
 wrenches, small anvil, set files, extra valve 
 springs, Gabriel horn, bar soft steel, extra 
 batteries, Robert s ammeter, extra brake bands, 
 extra brake linings, half dozen inner tubes, 
 two extra Goodrich casings fitted with Bailey 
 tread, sprags for rear axle, graphite, extra 
 gasoline tank, Hartford shock absorbers, ba 
 rometer, compass, extra dust caps, assortment 
 bolts, nuts and cotter pins. Mess kit. 
 
 On the afternoon of the fourteenth Fleming 
 called at the Albrights to say good-by to 
 Betty. He felt that fate had dealt him a 
 hard blow when he found Vannuccini also 
 making his adieux. Betty was in high spirits ; 
 she declared that she would be at Times Square 
 to see them off. Fleming reminded her that 
 the hour for starting was five in the morning. 
 It made no difference, she would see them start 
 if it was three! 
 
 And she did. In Jerry s mind the memories 
 of that morning hour remained for the rest of 
 
 31
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 his life. The streets were not yet filled with 
 their human tide and the vicinity wore a wait 
 ing look when Betty and her father drove up 
 to the rendezvous. Fleming and Sid were al 
 ready there, their car looking like an old cam 
 paigner with its tarpaulin-covered tonneau and 
 extra tires; and just as a clock near by struck 
 five Vannuccini s big red Superba whizzed up 
 the street. Betty, as cool and pretty as a 
 flower in her lavender linen, beamed upon them 
 from her electric runabout. Even her father 
 showed that he felt the interest of the moment, 
 and the two mechanics looked each other over 
 with critical eyes. The hour had come for 
 farewells. 
 
 Vannuccini, very handsome in faultless 
 French touring clothes, leaped from his car 
 and said his good-by in a low voice as he bent 
 over Betty s hand; Fleming descended more 
 slowly, some of the boyish excitement fading 
 out of his face as he watched them. 
 
 " Good-by, Betty," he said, trying to make 
 his voice matter-of-fact. Then his eyes met 
 hers. " I m going to make good!" he added 
 " for you." 
 
 She smiled at him; but he could not help 
 seeing that her eyes wandered to where Van 
 nuccini was climbing to the driver s seat in his 
 
 32
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 car. He admitted to himself that the signer 
 with his beautiful red Superba was enough to 
 catch and hold any girl s eye. His heart sank, 
 but a stubborn look came into his eyes as he 
 took hold of the starting crank. In another 
 instant they would have been off, but Betty 
 suddenly stood up and called after them gaily. 
 
 " I ve got an idea! " she cried. " I m going 
 to Batavia to-morrow to visit my aunt, and I ll 
 take dinner with the one who gets there first!" 
 
 "Good! until Batavia, au revoir!" re 
 sponded iVannuccini. 
 
 "See you in Batavia, Betty!" called Flem 
 ing, throwing in his clutch, and the long race 
 was on. 
 
 33
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SID JOHNSTON to his friend Terry 
 Moore. 
 BATAVIA, August 17th. 
 DEAR TERRY: 
 
 Don t ever take a contract to act as mechanic 
 for a man in love. That s the advice I thought 
 I ought to write you while I m able, for it s 
 dollars to doughnuts that if we go on as we ve 
 started I ll be receiving my weeping friends at 
 the morgue next week. Say, I m game, but 
 the pace for the last three days has me guess 
 ing till my nerve is getting frayed at the 
 edges. 
 
 We ve put the fear of death on the innocent 
 natives of New York State; we ve been off 
 the road and into the Montezuma marshes, and 
 we ve come within two inches of ramming a 
 fast freight and we on high speed with the 
 clutch locked in. I don t want any more racing 
 when there s a girl at the other end. A man 
 ain t responsible under those circumstances 
 but I ll tell you about it. 
 
 Terry, I m sorry you missed our start from 
 .Times Square the other day. It was as good 
 
 34
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 as the theater to see the Count of Monte 
 Cristo choo-choo up in his red fire-wagon. He 
 was got up regardless, and, Terry (it causes 
 me bitter tears to write it), his car is a bird! 
 Looks as if it would sail off and leave us a 
 vanishing speck on the horizon. It s got speed 
 and style, and if it carries much equipment 
 it is stowed away so you d hardly notice it. 
 While we well, you saw our outfit at the 
 garage, business-like but not elegant. I took 
 the rival outfit all in four cylinders, tremen 
 dous big gas tank, I-beam front axle with that 
 little foreign curve that makes people think it 
 can go, and the whole blooming outfit finished 
 up in that indescribable red that only the for 
 eign painters know how to get. I tell you, 
 it struck me that we were up against a pretty 
 stiff proposition when I sighted that car; but 
 when I got the chance I cocked my ears and 
 listened, and say, you know the throb of a 
 well-timed motor? Well, this one is off some 
 where. It didn t do any missing, but some 
 of the explosions came too near together and 
 others had a habit of lingering. I saw that 
 the Boss heard it, too, and I said, " Connect 
 ing-rod trouble ahead." He nodded; and 
 couldn t help looking a little more cheerful. 
 Sure enough but I haven t got to that yet. 
 
 35
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 It didn t take us long after we got outside 
 of town to find out that the Superba could beat 
 us on good roads, and after a couple of miles 
 we dropped back to second place, well out of 
 the dust, for the agreement was there should 
 be no racing the first day and each crew was 
 to spend the night at Albany. 
 
 At Poughkeepsie, where we had a good 
 dinner, there were the usual willing ones to 
 tell us how Mr. Italy had gone on through 
 town like a scared deer a whole hour before 
 we got in. I saw the Boss get a troubled look 
 and I knew he was thinking that that Dago 
 wouldn t stick to his agreement about Albany. 
 I didn t think he would either, so I hung on 
 and said nothing when the Boss began taking 
 corners at a speed that I thought would pull 
 our tires off at every turn. I don t mind 
 speed, but honest, I didn t think I d be alive as 
 far as Albany, and I wanted to see the capitol 
 before I passed in my checks. We had our auto- 
 meter showing fifty an hour, and that s going 
 some for a two-cylinder, twenty-four horse. 
 The Boss kept his foot down hard on the 
 throttle until I began to think I d signed as 
 an airship sailor, when we swung around a 
 corner and saw something that looked good 
 to us. Vannuccini s engine had begun to 
 
 36
 
 and his mechanic was under the car wiring 
 everything anew. 
 
 Say, it was joyful passing that outfit! I was 
 driving and I made up my mind if the Boss 
 wanted me to stop so he could oif er the cour 
 tesies of the road I d be struck deaf and 
 whizz right along. But he didn t. I guess 
 he thought of the date he had in Batavia, for 
 he intimated I could shove in my high speed; 
 and we reached Albany at 5 :30. 
 
 The agreement was that we were to stay 
 there all night, and of course, the Boss, being 
 on the level, prepared to stick to it. He left 
 a call for five next morning, but that didn t 
 satisfy me. The Italian had arrived an hour 
 after we got in. I was going up to bed when 
 I saw him talking like a brother to the night 
 clerk. I don t know why, but I didn t like the 
 look of his back. I picked out a bell-hop who 
 looked awake and I took him aside for a little 
 heart-to-heart talk. The result was that the 
 kid rapped on my door at two in the morning 
 and told me that Vannuccini had settled his 
 bill and left. 
 
 Well, I had the Boss out as if the place was 
 on fire, and we only struck the high places on 
 the way to the garage. We were out on the 
 Utica pike so soon after Italy that we could 
 
 37
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 see the glimmer of his searchlight not more 
 than a mile ahead. Terry, my boy, for two 
 hours it was the wildest thing in the line of 
 a night ride I ever saw, and you know I m 
 used to going some ! It was that thick kind of 
 blackness that comes just before daylight 
 sometimes; and through it, all the telephone 
 poles in existence seemed to be rushing at us. 
 You know, after a man has strained his eyes 
 watching a dark road for a long time, all kinds 
 of queer things seem to be coming at him. I 
 can tell you I wasn t objecting any when day 
 light came. We didn t stop to eat till we 
 reached Utica; and we pulled into Syracuse 
 only five minutes behind the red car. 
 
 At five next morning we were off again. 
 I could see that it was reach Batavia first or 
 die trying, with the Boss. Vannuccini took 
 the safer route into Rochester via Auburn and 
 Canandaigua, but the Boss picked the short 
 cut through the Montezuma marshes. And 
 that s where we skidded in among the frogs. 
 We d been delayed fifteen minutes tinkering 
 with a coil and the Boss was wild. He began 
 to take his corners too fast, and when we 
 reached the big S in the road over went the 
 rear wheels into the mud and cat-tails of the 
 swamp. We tried to get her out under power, 
 
 38
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 but the rear wheels just spun around and threw 
 mud and water all over us. Then the Boss 
 dug into the tonneau and brought out the two 
 cranks for the windlass. I carried the end of 
 the cable across the road and made it fast to 
 a telephone pole and we attached ourselves to 
 the windlass. Of course it was hard work, 
 but she came out by inches. That lost us an 
 hour. At Pittsford we learned that the Italian 
 had passed through town at a furious rate over 
 an hour before. Well, the Boss s foot went 
 down crash on the throttle and I nearly turned 
 a flip-flop over the back of my seat as our 
 little car shot ahead. It seemed only a minute 
 before we were in the outskirts of Rochester. 
 I could tell by the Boss s face that he was 
 going to run the risk of an arrest for speed 
 ing inside the city limits, when we got a bit 
 of news that made us walk through the city as 
 demure as a girl on her way to church. I had 
 got out to take a look at the gasoline tank, 
 when a couple of kids sitting on the curb sang 
 out: 
 
 " Mister, we see the cop arrest a man just 
 now for going too fast." 
 
 "Is that so?" said the Boss. "What did 
 his car look like?" 
 
 "A great big red one! " 
 39
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "Did the man have a little black mustache 
 and a tan leather coat?" 
 
 Yes, sir ! " both of them yelled, and I guess 
 if the Boss hadn t been in a hurry he d have 
 given those two kids the time of their lives. 
 He handed them out some silver and last we 
 saw of them they were looking up the road for 
 more luck of that kind. 
 
 Well, we didn t know whether Vannuccini 
 was ahead or behind, but three-quarters of the 
 way to Batavia I looked back at a turn in the 
 road and saw a red streak in the landscape. 
 He was coming, on high speed, too. He 
 couldn t take the corners as we could ; but when 
 we struck the level stretch into Batavia he came 
 up and went past us like an Atlantic type 
 passenger engine. Say, that was tough, to 
 have to slide behind and see the satisfied smile 
 on that Italian face of his! And there was 
 Batavia in plain sight. I couldn t bear to look 
 at the Boss, for I knew just how he was feel 
 ing. I was just thinking of relieving myself 
 by a little language when I saw Vannuccini 
 grab the emergency and slam it down until 
 his rear wheels slid. The road into town 
 crosses the railroad yards, and the Italian was 
 barely in time with his brakes, for a long 
 freight train thundered in, fairly shaving the 
 
 40
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 spring ends of the big red car as it skidded 
 and slid with the momentum of its sixty-five 
 mile an hour rush. 
 
 The rest happened so quick that I didn t 
 know the game until it was all over. Instead 
 of running up to the Superba as it waited for 
 the train to pass the Boss stopped the Nero 
 fully a hundred yards off, and for the life of 
 me I couldn t see why. Our engine kept 
 speeding and when I got out to feel the radi 
 ator I was ordered back in a hurry. When there 
 were still six cars of the freight train left to 
 pass us the Boss started the car, and by the 
 time four of them had gone past we were on 
 high speed and going some. Do you see his 
 nifty little game? Of course we only missed 
 ramming that caboose by inches, but we were 
 going at fifty miles an hour when we passed 
 the red car and Vannuccini had just com 
 menced to speed up his motor. By the time 
 he had thrown in his fourth speed we were 
 yards and yards to the good and going some! 
 
 With that start at the very edge of the town 
 we were able to romp right in first though I 
 must confess, only about three car lengths 
 ahead of our glittering rival. But that was 
 enough. Terry, I m giving it to you straight 
 when I say that the Boss looked as if he was 
 
 41
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 walking right up the golden stairs to heaven 
 when he got out of the car and took off his 
 hat to the Only Girl who stood on the veranda 
 looking a regular peach in a fluffy white dress. 
 
 As I drove the car to the garage I saw the 
 Italian hurrying into the Richmond House. 
 And now, what I m wondering is whether this 
 strenuous life is to be kept up all the way to 
 Portland. They ve an agreement to wire Miss 
 Albright from certain points along the line 
 and you never can tell what a man in love will 
 do. He ll break his neck trying to make an 
 impression and that s why I m writing you 
 while I m still able. 
 
 I must turn in ; we re off at four to-morrow 
 morning. 
 
 Yours, 
 SID.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 TEN days after her dinner with Fleming 
 at Batavia, Betty Albright found her 
 self the victim of a clipping bureau. 
 When a full realization of the situation 
 came to her she was first astounded and then 
 angry. She read the mass of newspaper clip 
 pings that began to pour in upon her with a 
 feeling of helpless annoyance. There seemed 
 to be no way to stop them; and worst of all, 
 she could not help but read! They were fas 
 cinating, absurd, undignified and the more 
 interested she grew the angrier she became. 
 She told herself that Jerry Fleming had 
 cheapened himself and the race by bringing 
 into the affair an element of commercialism 
 totally unexpected and unbargained for. For 
 Jerry, it developed from the newspaper clip 
 pings, was an extremely modern knight. He 
 was not content to enter the lists with her col 
 ors pinned to his sleeve and pure chivalry as 
 his end and aim not he! While he drove for 
 the love of his lady, Jerry, the astute, was 
 perseveringly advertising his car and his fac 
 tory. 
 
 43
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 That was what offended Betty. No woman 
 likes to acknowledge that a man can with per 
 fect facility serve the god of love and the god 
 of business at the same time. And because 
 Betty would not own up to a personal pique, 
 she justified her annoyance on the ground that 
 any personal advertising was against the eti 
 quette of the contest. With very bright eyes 
 and an expression that boded no good to the 
 cause of Mr. Jerry Fleming she laid the matter 
 before her father. 
 
 " What do you think, Dad," she said, walk 
 ing into her father s den one evening before 
 dinner, " Jerry isn t playing fair. He s work 
 ing some kind of an advertising scheme all 
 along the route. I think it s quite common 
 of him! I- 
 
 "Easy, Betty," her father interrupted. 
 "What s this Fleming s doing exactly, 
 now? " 
 
 "Well, look at these! " Betty cried, holding 
 out a handful of envelopes. " I m being sim 
 ply snowed under, by a horrid clipping bureau. 
 And they re all Jerry, Jerry, Jerry and his 
 wonderful car." 
 
 "How does it happen they re sent to you, 
 Bet?" 
 
 Betty sat down opposite her father, 
 
 44
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 wrinkled her brows thoughtfully, and said: 
 "Why, I don t know unless Dad, do you 
 suppose Jerry ! " 
 
 Her father s eyes twinkled. "Yes," he 
 said, "I suppose Jerry! That s part of his 
 advertising scheme. Out of sight out of 
 mind won t do for Fleming. He s evidently 
 notified some bureau to send all news items 
 concerning himself to you and you ve got to 
 grin and hear it, Betty, for there s no stop 
 ping a clipping bureau when it once gets to 
 work. Don t open the letters if they bother 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, it isn t that!" she exclaimed. " What 
 annoys me is that I don t think it quite nice 
 of Jerry to make the race a sort of circus pro 
 cession across the continent. It wasn t in the 
 agreement; it wasn t the the object of the 
 contest." 
 
 She colored charmingly as she reflected on 
 that moment of innocent vanity when she had 
 supposed the object of the race to be herself. 
 But her father was blind to anything so deli 
 cate as a girl s wounded pride. He was think 
 ing of the letter of the law. 
 
 "He s got a perfect right to use the race 
 for advertising purposes if he sees fit, Betty. 
 The advertising part of it," he added with a 
 
 45
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 grim smile, "was one side we didn t count on 
 Vannuccini and I. It isn t too late yet; 
 . . . but let s see how Fleming s doing the 
 trick." 
 
 He held out his hand for the batch of clip 
 pings Betty held. They came from all sorts 
 of sources, the automobile journal, the big 
 daily, and the rural weekly. They formed an 
 interesting sidelight on the character of the 
 man whose doings they chronicled. From them 
 one gained an impression of a picturesque re 
 sourcefulness, a daring not hampered by a too 
 modest self -estimate, and perseverance little 
 short of genius. 
 
 From Buffalo to Chicago Jerry Fleming s 
 trail was marked by the newspaper para 
 graphs. They varied from a two-inch notice 
 to a "feature" in the Sunday supplement; 
 they were enriched by pictures Fleming in, 
 beside and under his car; Fleming, smiling, 
 as he shook hands with the mayor of Elyria; 
 Fleming giving the postmistress of Yorkville, 
 111., a ride round the public square; Flem 
 ing the intrepid motorist being met by the 
 Automobile Club of Cleveland, Toledo and 
 Elkhart. 
 
 And the car! The car performing valiantly 
 in Illinois mud; the car in sunshine and rain; 
 the car standing on its hind legs and charging 
 spiritedly uphill ; the car wreathed with laurels 
 
 46
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and crowned with victory. Jerry Fleming s 
 incomparable car, than which none better could 
 be met with from New York to Portland! 
 
 Betty Albright s father read and read and 
 then he laughed aloud. 
 
 "By George, Betty!" he exclaimed, "the 
 beggar s playing the game. Why, see here, 
 daughter, there s ten thousand dollars worth 
 of advertising in those clippings. Do you no 
 tice the way he s managed to work in his Nero 
 in every notice ? Every man, woman and child 
 who reads those papers has read a clever bit 
 of special pleading for Fleming s car and 
 they ll remember it, too. I never thought I 
 could learn anything from Jerry Fleming." 
 
 Betty looked highly disdainful. " Father ! " 
 she said, " you wouldn t stoop to such methods 
 to advertise the Superba, would you?" 
 
 The old man s eyes twinkled. " Sure!" he 
 said, promptly. " Why not? Read this one 
 from Elyria, Ohio," 
 
 " * Dust-covered, burnt like an Indian, but 
 broadly smiling, the genial Jerry Fleming ar 
 rived in Elyria yesterday in his staunch little 
 Nero en route for Portland, Oregon. With 
 his mechanic, Fleming has started on a 4,000- 
 mile race across the continent. W T ith special 
 sand- tires he will cross the desert; by the aid 
 of a windlass rigged in the body of his car he 
 will climb the Rockies. In his specially de- 
 
 47
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 signed Nero he will demonstrate what can be 
 conquered in the way of quicksands, snow 
 storms, and unbridged rivers by a fine car in 
 the hands of a fearless driver." 
 
 Mr. Albright laid down the clipping and 
 chuckled. " Isn t that a neat little puff, daugh 
 ter?" he laughed. "Worth a fifty-dollar ad 
 in the Elyria Standard. And see this one 
 all about how the intrepid Fleming in his never- 
 to-be-beaten car was met by the Auto Club of 
 South Bend, amidst waving flags and tooting 
 horns ! Eh what do you think of that, Betty? 
 Clever, isn t it?" 
 
 "I call it vulgar!" said Betty. 
 
 Her father smiled grimly. " I call it good 
 business," he returned. "I didn t know the 
 young beggar had it in him. But every local 
 puff he gets means time. With all this press 
 business, he must be losing ground fast. How 
 much ahead was Vannuccini when he wired 
 last?" 
 
 Betty took from the pile of clippings some 
 yellow envelopes. "At Cleveland," she read, 
 "Mr. Vannuccini sent in his wire four hours 
 ahead of Jerry; and at Chicago Jerry seemed 
 to be six hours behind." 
 
 "But the motorists fell over themselves to 
 meet him in Chicago, and he got half a column 
 in the Inter Ocean!" commented her father. 
 
 48
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " While Vannuccini in my $3,000 Superba ap 
 pears to have gone through after dark. Not 
 a line in the papers not a cent s worth of 
 publicity!" 
 
 "Mr. Vannuccini," interrupted Betty with 
 dignity, " is racing like a gentleman and a 
 sportsman not as if he was the advance agent 
 for a circus! " 
 
 Her father laughed and then drew his brows 
 together. " By George ! the chance he s miss 
 ing ! Why, according to those clippings Flem 
 ing hasn t overlooked an opportunity for pub 
 licity on the route. He s getting hundreds of 
 dollars worth of free advertising where we re 
 not getting one." 
 
 Betty s head went up. " I didn t know that 
 was the purpose of the race " 
 
 "Why not? Why not?" her father re 
 torted irritably. "What other object would 
 there be? What " 
 
 But Betty had retreated to the door, 
 offended and beginning to get a rosy color. 
 But before she reached it, Nora appeared with 
 the last mail. On the tray Betty recognized 
 the envelope of the clipping bureau. She tore 
 it open with an impatient hand. 
 
 "Oh! " she exclaimed, "Jerry is impossible! 
 Listen to this: 
 
 "Fremont, Nebraska, Mercury: With a 
 49
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Billy Primrose grin adorning his mud-bespat 
 tered countenance, Jerry Fleming in his fa 
 mous race across the continent arrived in town 
 this afternoon. He took the schoolma am and 
 half the school for a ride round town in his 
 famous Nero Mountaineer; called on the 
 mayor and dropped in for a chat with the 
 editor. Mr. Fleming has met with samples of 
 Iowa " gumbo " mud in the last three days, but 
 he says that not even this black mud can stall 
 his car, and we re inclined to believe it can t 
 with such a hustler as Fleming at the wheel. 
 Call again, Jerry, and we ll give you the free 
 dom of the town ! " 
 
 Betty made a sound of deep displeasure; 
 but her father put his head back and laughed. 
 
 " He ought to be in politics," he declared. 
 
 "He will lose the race," she said. 
 
 " Mebbe, mebbe ; but he s going to get a lot 
 out of it, one way. All that free adver " 
 
 "Business! " cried Betty as she ran from the 
 room; "always business!" 
 
 Her father pushed a perplexed hand 
 through his hair. " Why, sure, why not, 
 Betty? " 
 
 But Betty was rapidly climbing the stairs. 
 In her room she crumpled the offensive clip 
 pings and threw them into the waste-paper 
 basket. Then she picked them all out and 
 
 50
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 smoothed them flat. She read the item from 
 the Fremont Mercury again. 
 
 " I can t imagine Mr. Vannuccini making 
 himself so so ordinary!" she reflected. 
 
 But she did not put the clippings back into 
 ihe waste basket. 
 
 51
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 TWENTY miles from Omaha with its 
 radiator pointed west Jerry Fleming s 
 blue car was eating up the Nebraska 
 section lines. Only fifty miles lay be 
 tween him and the Iowa border; but already a 
 subtle change had crept into the feeling of 
 things. They were on the threshold of the 
 West. Distance was reckoned, not by miles, 
 but by section lines; the black prairie soil of 
 the corn belt was giving way to arid acres; a 
 hundred miles and the prairie dog town would 
 take the place of the snug villages they were 
 flying through. 
 
 It was five in the morning. In Fleming s 
 ears the sweet morning air sang with an in 
 spiriting note. For the first time since the be 
 ginning of the journey he was able to throw 
 off the strain of anxious effort and feel some 
 thing of the wonder of this vast country 
 through which he was driving his car. The 
 wind seemed to rush at them from illimitable 
 space; over great levels the road stretched till 
 it vanished before them; like a calm sea was 
 the prairie as the wind swept over it. Later 
 the sun would beat down upon them from a 
 
 52
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 relentless blaze of deep blue heaven; but now 
 the whole world seemed waiting in a kind of 
 cool stillness. 
 
 Fleming felt his spirits rising. The night 
 before in Omaha he had gone to bed at his 
 hotel, half dead with weariness; and for the 
 first time he had faced the possibility of defeat. 
 For Vannuccini was somewhere eight hours 
 ahead of him. This Fleming had learned at 
 the first telegraph station inside the city limits 
 of Omaha when he sent in his telegram to 
 Betty. The telegraph operator told him an 
 Italian in a big red car had sent a wire from 
 his station at ten that morning; and, "when 
 I saw him last," he added, "he was hitting the 
 macadam west like a scared jackrabbit." 
 
 From Buffalo to Chicago and from Chicago 
 to Omaha the run had been uneventful, as flat 
 and monotonous as the level miles their auto- 
 meter recorded. Good roads and indifferent 
 roads alike had unwound before them without 
 even the dubious interest of an accident. But 
 half way across the level stretches of Illinois 
 there came a change in the shape of a terrific 
 rainstorm. By a lucky margin Vannuccini 
 missed this storm which turned the Illinois 
 loam into a welter of black mud, but Fleming 
 ran squarely into it and was caught like a fly 
 in a web. 
 
 53
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 For three days they labored through a night 
 mare of the famous " gumbo " mud, until the 
 car and its occupants were unrecognizable and 
 each wheel resembled a huge mud pie. Work 
 ing knee deep in mud and water Fleming and 
 Sid had to resort again and again to the cable 
 and windlass ; the water in the radiator boiled, 
 and through the lowlands along the Rock River 
 the water flowed into the car itself. Twice 
 they found a bridge down, and when they 
 reached the Skunk River bottoms in Iowa the 
 climax of their difficulties was reached they 
 were forced to try conclusions with a mud-hole 
 that for size and depth and general nastiness, 
 as Sid put it, beat every other mud-hole in the 
 world. 
 
 But here they met a friend. He was a lean, 
 wiry fellow who said he was a doctor. He was 
 on his way to a country patient in a gasoline 
 runabout of an ancient pattern. As he came 
 plowing sturdily through the mud toward 
 them, a delightful grin began to illuminate his 
 countenance; in an instant he was out of his 
 machine and reaching out to grasp their hands. 
 
 "Say!" he cried, "I m tickled to death to 
 meet you fellows. I ve read all about you in 
 the papers. I m the only man in our town 
 that s got a car, and I sez to myself I d be 
 
 54
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 durned if I wouldn t come out and meet you if 
 I knew when you d be along. Now, what can 
 I do for you?" 
 
 Fleming laughed wearily. " Lend me a bal 
 loon to get out of this swamp," he answered. 
 
 The little doctor viewed their plight in a 
 matter-of-fact way ; long residence in the Mid 
 dle West had made him philosophical on the 
 subject of roads. "Got plenty of rope and a 
 block and tackle? " he asked. They had. The 
 Mountaineer plunged into the mud until stuck 
 fast and then the rope was run out, attached 
 to the front spring hanger and the other end 
 made fast to the doctor s runabout, which still 
 stood on dry land. Thus, with everybody push 
 ing and the free car towing, they managed to 
 work their way across a swamp considered im 
 passable in wet weather. In the meantime the 
 carburetor had shipped some water and the bat 
 tery had short-circuited. But these were minor 
 evils to the lowan. He cheerfully fell to work 
 and in the midst of their labors he imparted a 
 bit of information that interested Fleming and 
 Sid immensely. It was to the effect that he 
 had been in an Altoona garage when a big red 
 car was brought in for an overhauling early 
 that morning. From his description Fleming 
 knew at once it was the Superba. 
 
 55
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "I was considerably interested in that big 
 car," said the doctor, " and of course I was 
 hanging around most of the time it was in the 
 garage. And, say, it struck me as a kind of 
 useless risk with a speedy car like that, to put 
 picric acid in its gasoline tank " 
 
 "Picric acid! " they echoed; and then looked 
 at each other with a grin of understanding. 
 The weeping skies seemed to lighten ; the mud 
 became less formidable. If Vannuccini was 
 resorting to carbazotic, or picric acid, a most 
 dangerous stimulant, to heighten his speed, it 
 meant that he had lost something of his self- 
 confidence in the face of the West. 
 
 " Say, the country has given him a jolt," 
 said Sid, in a more cheerful tone than Fleming 
 had heard him use in many miles. "I hope 
 he cracks a cylinder with that acid," he added 
 amiably. 
 
 The next news they had of their rival came 
 to them in an equally unexpected manner, and 
 produced in Fleming a curious mingling of 
 emotions. Across the great level stretches of 
 Nebraska the Platte River, with its many long 
 bridges, unrolls itself like a lazy snake. In 
 the spring it swallows its low banks and forms 
 unexpected lakes, but during the dry season 
 it flows sluggishly within bounds, respecting 
 
 56
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 the rights of the road that travels along beside 
 it. Once he had run out of the path of the 
 storm Fleming found this road a fairly good 
 highway, except for an occasional patch of 
 deep alkali dust. Making the best of it, they 
 were able to reach Palmer, a hundred miles 
 or so west of Omaha, that evening. 
 
 Gathered in front of the one hotel of Pal 
 mer, with their hats off to the evening coolness, 
 was a large percentage of the male population 
 and a sprinkling of farmers, the sheriff from 
 Prairie Creek, a traveling salesman and a 
 grizzled ranchman from the North country. 
 The traveling man was true to his type and 
 did most of the talking, but the cattleman oc 
 casionally threw in a remark. They in com 
 pany with everyone else in town had looked 
 over the car with intense interest and had prof 
 fered advice freely to Fleming. They had 
 then tilted their chairs against the wooden 
 front of the hotel and prepared to utter the 
 final word on automobiling in general. Flem 
 ing, who had learned that a friendly interest 
 in the people he met generally resulted in valu 
 able bits of information, smoked his pipe with 
 them and listened. It appeared that the seller 
 of merchandise and the old ranchman had 
 made each other s acquaintance in Kearney the 
 
 57
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 night before. The occasion had been a poker 
 game in " Solomon s Place," and the memories 
 of the evening continued to prompt them to 
 reminiscence. 
 
 "I ve sure seen all kinds of players in 
 Solomon s Place," remarked the ranchman 
 after their own game had been threshed out, 
 "but for nerve and endurance that black-haired 
 fellow was one of the stars. Why, he " 
 
 " That s so," interrupted the traveling man. 
 " Maybe you know him? " he turned to Flem 
 ing. " Come into town yesterday morning in 
 a big red automobile. I heard he was one of 
 those fellows that are racing across to Frisco; 
 I didn t have the chance to ask him, or I would. 
 But I seen him in Solomon s Place " 
 
 "When?" came from both Fleming and 
 Sid. 
 
 "Last night, when Peters and I were hav 
 ing that little game we ve talked about. He d 
 been there since ten that morning, Sol said, 
 and it was midnight when Peters and I pulled 
 out. He was playing then, as cool as a cucum 
 ber, and I heard next morning he played till 
 three." 
 
 " He sure was a practiced hand! " sighed the 
 old ranchman, thinking of his own bad luck in 
 Solomon s Place. 
 
 58
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Fleming looked up keenly. " What makes 
 you think so? " he said. 
 
 "My son, I ve played in most every gam 
 bling place from Portland to Chicago and I ve 
 seen all kinds of players, them that was so 
 green they hurt your eyes, and them that had 
 been playing the game since they were born. 
 And if ever I seen a gambler born and bred 
 that black-haired feller last night was one. 
 Men that play like I do just for fun don t 
 keep it up seventeen hours at a stretch, and 
 they don t have the same kind of a look, some 
 way." 
 
 Fleming turned to the drummer. " Can you 
 describe him?" 
 
 " Sure; small black mustache, black hair and 
 eyes, looked like a foreigner ; and he had a ring 
 with a big green stone on his little finger. 
 Friend of yours? " 
 
 " Thanks," said Fleming, and that was all. 
 He strolled off to where the car had been run 
 into the hotel barn, and Sid followed. What 
 he had learned had only confirmed a suspicion 
 that had lain at the bottom of his mind for 
 months. In New York there had been vague 
 rumors concerning Vannuccini which fitted in 
 perfectly with the title of gambler just be 
 stowed upon him by the Westerner. These 
 
 59
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 rumors had added to his uneasiness on Betty s 
 account ; but even now, with his additional evi 
 dence, he felt the impossibility of turning tale 
 bearer against a rival. There was only one 
 thing to do pull first into Portland. He 
 turned to find Sid looking at him with an 
 eagerly questioning eye. 
 
 " Say, I ve overhauled the car; she s all 
 ready. If we make a night run of it maybe 
 we can overtake him. What do you say? " 
 
 It was a temptation, but Fleming shook his 
 head. He had learned that nothing was to be 
 gained by going without sleep. 
 
 " Have the car around at four in the morn 
 ing," he said. "I think we ll catch up with 
 him at Cheyenne." 
 
 As he watched the road ahead of him in the 
 early light of next morning Fleming s mind 
 traveled over the usual problem : where was the 
 other car at that moment, and how could he cut 
 down their stops so as to make up what they 
 had lost in the Middle West? Fleming felt al 
 most a prophetic certainty that if he could 
 enter Wyoming on even terms he could hold 
 his own against even the high-powered Su- 
 perba. 
 
 With an even start I can beat him in the 
 desert, Sid. We ought to make Kearney some 
 
 60
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 time this afternoon; Julesburg to-morrow 
 afternoon and " 
 
 He stopped and slowed down as Johnston 
 raised a warning hand. They were twenty 
 miles south of Palmer, headed toward the 
 Platte. Before them a small creek hastening 
 down to the river had worn a deep bed through 
 the alkali soil; the wooden bridge over this 
 creek was perhaps six feet from the water. 
 As usual, Johnston hopped out and tried the 
 structure. He said it looked a little dubious 
 to him ; but there was no danger notice posted. 
 They started to crawl across the bridge on low 
 speed. 
 
 Exactly in the middle of it there came a 
 warning groan from the structure, and the 
 next instant the car and its freight went crash 
 ing down into the water. 
 
 A minute later two battered automobilists 
 climbed the bank and cast themselves down on 
 the ground. How they had escaped being 
 crushed under the car they could not tell; in 
 its drop it had evidently tilted to one side and 
 pitched them out. Sid nursed a bruised shoul 
 der, and Fleming, after a moment or two, 
 clambered down to the water again and re 
 luctantly examined the car. His sentiments at 
 that time were too bitter to be voiced in words. 
 
 61
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 It was the worst moment he had known, for to 
 all outward appearances the car, his great hope, 
 was a wreck. But overwhelmed as he was, he 
 was the first to pull himself together. 
 
 " She s got to be righted and pulled out of 
 here," he said tersely. He winced from his 
 bruises as he stood up, but his face was set. He 
 told Sid to collect that part of their outfit that 
 was gracing the bottom of the little stream and 
 to lighten the car. He himself set out across 
 the prairie in the direction of a farm they had 
 passed a mile back. 
 
 When he returned he rode a gaunt gray 
 mule, while a greatly curious farmer followed 
 on horseback. The Nebraskan s only comment 
 on the accident was to the effect that they had 
 needed a new bridge a long time and now they; 
 would get it. 
 
 It took an hour to get the car to the top of 
 the bank ; and another to put it in condition to 
 be hauled to town. The fall had broken both 
 front springs, sprung the front axle badly, and 
 damaged the steering gear to such an extent 
 that the wheel would only turn in one direction. 
 The lamps were badly dented, one mud guard 
 smashed, the radiator badly battered and the 
 bonnet caved in. Altogether it was a depress 
 ing sight. Jerry s face, as they were ignomini- 
 
 62
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 ously hauled into Grand Island late that after 
 noon by the horse and gray mule, was a study 
 in deep dejection. 
 
 Here in Hart s garage the blue car stayed 
 that night and the next day while Fleming, 
 Sid and the entire garage force worked fever 
 ishly to get it in traveling trim. By nine 
 o clock the second evening it was ready to go 
 on, not much the worse for the adventure. A 
 glorious moon was just above the horizon. 
 Fleming figured on reaching Kearney, forty 
 miles west, before daylight. 
 
 Steering clear of the pitfalls of the lower 
 road, he kept his car close to the foot of the 
 sand hills which undulated to the north of 
 them, magically white in the radiance of the 
 wonderful Western moonlight. Now and then 
 they caught a glimpse of the Platte, shining 
 between its banks. At midnight they were 
 running into Kearney, and the moonlight still 
 held; it lighted, in fact, the entire street and 
 poured into the windows of a garage they were 
 passing. It fell upon the bright red paint of 
 a big automobile standing within and reflected 
 back its shining brass. Johnston, who was 
 driving, brought the car to a sudden stop, flung 
 himself from his seat and peered in at the win 
 dow. He came running back on tiptoe, as if
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 afraid the red car would hear him and come 
 out. His face was full of unrighteous joy. 
 
 " It s the Superba," he chuckled, " and 
 they ve cracked a cylinder good for that pic 
 ric acid ! " 
 
 He climbed in and put his hand to the steer 
 ing wheel. There was nothing said, but the two 
 understood each other. They did not need sleep 
 now. Two minutes later they were flying 
 through the last half hour of moonlight, 
 straight west. And for the first time in thir 
 teen hundred miles the red car was behind 
 them.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 "TF VE got it figured out we can make 
 Julesburg to-morrow afternoon and 
 
 M Cheyenne next day," Jerry was saying, 
 exultantly, as they plunged ahead over the un 
 dulating prairie. 
 
 "If we ain t handed out another bad luck 
 deal," Johnston added, and at that moment it 
 happened. They had left the road, which was 
 deep in sand and alkali dust, and were running 
 free over the prairie, keeping the river in sight 
 as a guide. What appeared to be a smooth 
 patch of hard earth had invited Johnston to 
 "let her out a notch." The next instant the 
 front wheels sank to the axles w r ith a sudden 
 ness that nearly sent them flying over the hood. 
 Fleming had to climb out before he could 
 realize what had happened. Then he saw that 
 the car was hopelessly stalled in a buffalo-wal 
 low! As if it had attempted to traverse thin 
 ice, the two-thousand-pound car had broken 
 through the crust which the alkali soil forms 
 over these old wallows all through Nebraska, 
 and in two minutes it had settled almost to the 
 engine. 
 
 65
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Sid climbed down. His language was a 
 striking combination of East Side vituperation 
 and newly acquired Western profanity. Flem 
 ing lighted his pipe. He had never found it 
 any relief to swear; in stressful times he gen 
 erally became doggedly silent. His spirits, 
 soaring in the air a minute before, struck bot 
 tom ; but his first thought was of what could be 
 done. At the crucial moment the moon had 
 dropped below the horizon. They unfastened 
 one of the oil lamps and decided that the car 
 had sunk as far as it was going to; but it was 
 too dark to extricate it then. There was noth 
 ing to do but to try for a couple of hours 
 sleep. 
 
 "Oh, I dunno! this ain t so bad; if I had a 
 cinder in my eye I couldn t tell it from a sleep 
 ing car!" said Sid, as he accommodated him 
 self to the tonneau seat. 
 
 But it seemed that he was too sanguine. In 
 twenty minutes they were both looking for 
 more coverings. They spoke longingly of the 
 army blankets they were to take on at Chey 
 enne, and donned their leathers. At two o clock 
 of a Nebraska morning on the lowlands of the 
 Platte the air is decidedly nipping. Presently 
 they rose again and put on sweaters that had 
 been serving as pillows, and a third time they 
 
 66
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 got up to hunt for their rubber shirts. The last 
 thing Fleming knew Sid was wrapping his 
 feet in yards and yards of hemp rope. In spite 
 of his misery Fleming laughed. He reflected 
 that something funny could be extracted from 
 almost any situation. He looked for a long 
 minute at the starlit immensity above him and 
 the next thing he knew Johnston was singing 
 out, " Last call for the dining-car! " 
 
 A line of rose showed above the horizon ; the 
 gray dawn would shortly give way to the sun, 
 and there was a heavenly smell of coffee from 
 the pot Sid had propped over the blow-torch 
 (for there is no wood to be had in Nebraska) ; 
 and hope stirred once more in the call to work. 
 
 It was eleven that morning before they 
 cleared the car from the mire. Anything 
 stickier than the mud of a buffalo-wallow an 
 Easterner cannot imagine. Before anything 
 could be done with the cable and windlass the 
 running gear had to be freed somewhat from 
 the mud. Sid began to shovel light-heartedly; 
 but in another minute he was standing appalled 
 at the mass of grayish muck that stuck to 
 his feet and refused to be parted from his 
 shovel. 
 
 " Say!" he complained, "it s like trying to 
 shovel a ton of molasses candy! " 
 
 67
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 In the meantime they had the added chagrin 
 of seeing the red car flash past a half mile 
 away on the river road. 
 
 "Twenty an hour!" commented Sid rue 
 fully; but Fleming shut his mouth hard and 
 returned to the problem of how to use his cable 
 when there was not a tree in the State, and 
 the nearest telephone pole looked like a needle 
 in the distance. He got around this difficulty 
 eventually by the process that Westerners call 
 " planting a dead-man." Digging two trenches, 
 one at right angles with the other, he tied the 
 cable to the spade handle and buried it in the 
 horizontal trench, stamping the earth down 
 hard over it and allowing the cable to play out 
 through the shallower second trench. Thus 
 with their cable hitched to the earth itself and 
 both men straining at the windlass handles the 
 mired car began finally to move. 
 
 There is to some natures an exhilaration in 
 the conquering of difficulties. Fleming felt 
 once more his high spirits returning as he gave 
 the last twist to the windlass. If resource and 
 determination counted for anything he would 
 start even with Vannuccini by the time they 
 faced the unknown difficulties of Wyoming. 
 In the two last trying days his belief in himself 
 and in his car had grown. With the motor or 
 
 68
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 gears there had not been a minute s trouble 
 since they left New York. If no more misad 
 ventures befell them it seemed reasonable to 
 believe they would leave Cheyenne not far be 
 hind the Superba. 
 
 At noon they filled their gasoline tanks at 
 Lexington for the one hundred and seventy 
 mile run into Julesburg. Here they found the 
 red car to be less than two hours ahead of them, 
 and the news revived Sid so effectually that he 
 narrowly escaped arrest in driving out of Lex 
 ington. 
 
 All that afternoon they flew through vast 
 tracks of unfenced prairie land; prairie chick 
 ens tempted their rifle, while quail, wild doves 
 and an occasional eagle rose with a whirr of 
 wings from their path. At Lodge Pole they 
 found a ranch owner forming a hunting party 
 to track a band of gray wolves that had killed 
 eighteen head of cattle the night before. And 
 beyond North Platte they ran the car squarely- 
 through the middle of a huge coil of rattle 
 snakes sunning themselves in the sandy trail. 
 It was a lively moment. Snakes of assorted 
 sizes flew in all directions, one large rattler, 
 with his buttons playing a fearful tune, land 
 ing in the tonneau of the car. There was no 
 stopping to dispute the right of way ; Fleming 
 
 69
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and Sid jumped wildly, leaving the outraged 
 rattler in full possession. With their six-shoot 
 ers they dispatched the several rattlers in sight 
 and then sat down to wait for their car to be 
 vacated. It was some time before the big 
 snake slid cautiously to the ground, and when 
 he finally landed a well-directed shot from 
 Sid s Colt s automatic put an end to what had 
 been a singularly unpleasant quarter of an 
 hour. Sid wiped his brow as he climbed back 
 into his seat. 
 
 " And I was happy and safe a block from 
 Broadway!" he remarked plaintively. 
 
 Fleming laughed. "Why, Sid, Broadway 
 will be dull after this! Buck up now. To 
 morrow we ll be in Cheyenne and the real fun 
 will begin." 
 
 From Lodge Pole to Cheyenne their route 
 dipped through the northeastern corner of 
 Colorado, into the prairie-dog country, the land 
 of sage brush and deceptive distances. That 
 their way was rising to meet the Rockies was 
 becoming evident by the wonderful clearness 
 of the air, which late in the afternoon played 
 them the sort of a trick it has always ready for 
 the Easterner. Fleming, who was driving, 
 noticed that the engine was losing power. He 
 threw out the clutch and turned off the switch, 
 
 70
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 but the engine still continued to fire. He con 
 cluded there was something wrong with the 
 pump, and Johnston climbed down to investi 
 gate. 
 
 " The pump s all right," he called back, "but 
 there s nothing to pump. There isn t a drop 
 of water in the little old wagon!" 
 
 They found a leaking radiator pipe which 
 had evidently been twisted by a tough patch of 
 sage brush, and though the pipe itself could 
 be repaired on the spot with a few drops of 
 solder, the serious part of their difficulty struck 
 them when they found that they had emptied 
 their last water tank ten miles back. A few 
 hundred miles farther east they had run in 
 water up to the hubs; and now when they 
 wanted water the country looked as thirsty as 
 a neglected rubber-plant. The only promise 
 held out to them was where a tiny light had 
 just sprung up across the prairie, apparently 
 a mile or so away. Johnston took the pail and 
 started off, whistling. Fleming lighted the big 
 Solar searchlight to guide him back, and sat 
 him down to wait. 
 
 The darkness became complete; in all that 
 vast expanse of starlit level only the one little 
 light gave a promise of human life. He 
 waited two hours, and then suddenly Johnston 
 
 71
 
 stepped out of the darkness. A more thor 
 oughly disgusted face Fleming had never 
 seen and the water pail was empty. 
 
 " Say," he cried, " do you see a light out 
 there, or don t you?" 
 
 Fleming assured him he did. " Well," Sid 
 responded, "you can put it down it s one of 
 those spook lights you read about in books. 
 Say I walked four miles or more and that 
 light never got any nearer than it is now. 
 Every little while I d hear a snake rustle out 
 of the way and I got to that state where a 
 jack-rabbit looked like a wolf to me. I sez 
 to myself, it s back to the car for mine, and I 
 tell you the rays from that battered old Solar 
 looked good to me ! How far do you suppose 
 that glim is, anyway?" 
 
 " Haven t an idea, now," said Fleming, and 
 proposed that they drive toward the light till 
 the engine became hot again and then stop to 
 let it cool. Thus they made their way labori 
 ously once more toward the elusive light. It 
 jumped out upon them at last from the win 
 dow of a small ranch house and their auto- 
 meter showed that they had traveled ten miles 
 to reach it. 
 
 " Say, don t tell them I started out to walk 
 it!" begged Sid; and Fleming assured him 
 
 72
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 that no Westerner would need that tale to con 
 vince him they were tenderfeet. 
 
 Next morning in Cheyenne they had the 
 good luck to find a talkative operator in the 
 telegraph office when they stopped to wire 
 New York. 
 
 " He sure was a lordly party," said the 
 operator. " He says to me he wants his money 
 and wants it quick. I explained to him it s 
 the rule of the company a man must be identi 
 fied. You see, a party in New York had 
 wired him money; but he couldn t produce 
 anyone in Cheyenne that would say he was 
 Vermicelli 
 
 " Vannuccini," said Fleming. 
 
 "D you know him?" 
 
 " Slightly. I am sort of keeping him 
 company across to Portland. How did you 
 settle the money question? " 
 
 " Well, I made out a check for the amount 
 payable to Vannuccini and told him he could 
 take his chances of getting it cashed. And I 
 directed him to Heinze. Don t you know 
 Heinze s place? Biggest gambling palace be 
 tween here and Portland. Heinze is a good 
 fellow; he ll cash anything if you take it to 
 his place. So off goes the Italian gent to the 
 Crystal Palace. What time? Oh, about eight 
 
 73
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 last night. No, I don t know where he is now. 
 He wasn t talking much. He puffed up here 
 in his big buzz-wagon and the boys that were 
 waiting for number nine sort of crowded 
 around wanted to size up the car, you know. 
 But the Count was some peevish; wasn t in 
 viting any of them to ride, and his private 
 thoughts about the country say, what did he 
 expect? A Turkish bath and a manicure par 
 lor every section or two? He seemed to be 
 sour because there ain t any buffets or cafe 
 chantongs between here and Julesburg. Say, 
 if he s a friend of yours you d better put him 
 wise to a thing or two before he gets into the 
 Bitter Creek country!" 
 
 Fleming laughed. " I don t think he s 
 waiting for me to catch up with advice. I 
 supposed he wired New York last night?" 
 
 " Sure ! " said the operator. " It was the 
 only thing that seemed to give him any; satis 
 faction." 
 
 Jerry sighed; and wrote on a yellow blank: 
 
 " Dear B. The tortoise is still on the job. 
 Not so far behind as this reads. His senti 
 ments just the same. Won t you write? Ter 
 ribly dangerous country. My young life may] 
 come to an end any minute. Hadn t you bet 
 ter write before it s too late?" 
 
 74
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Somewhat cheered by this ingenious mes 
 sage to his lady, he said good-by to the friendly 
 operator and whizzed off to the Inter-Ocean 
 Hotel. It had been a severe disappointment 
 to have to spend the night in a section house 
 twenty miles from Cheyenne; but this was as 
 near as they could get with a leaking radiator 
 pipe. And a deeper disappointment awaited 
 him at the Cheyenne post-office. At the gen 
 eral delivery window a thick bundle of letters 
 had been handed him and he had looked them 
 through while Johnston drove him to the tele 
 graph office. Then a sudden blight fell on 
 his spirits; there was not a line from Betty 
 Albright. He had not realized until that in 
 stant how keenly he had looked forward to 
 getting this mail at Cheyenne. He had not 
 been surprised to find nothing from her at 
 Chicago he had seen her so recently; at 
 Omaha he was disappointed, but hopeful; 
 but to find not so much as a post card from her 
 at Cheyenne was a blow. 
 
 He could not console himself with the 
 thought that she did not know where to write 
 the route of the Nero had been in half the 
 papers of the country, owing to his enterprise 
 in the advertising line; he had himself sent 
 her a list of the important stops, and his wires 
 
 75
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 had been frequent and suggestive. No, in 
 some way he had fallen from grace. Or had 
 he been supplanted? That thought was un 
 bearable; he fell furiously to work on his 
 preparations for the next stage of the jour 
 ney. 
 
 There was five hours work to be done be 
 fore they could go on. A new radiator pipe 
 was put in, and to guard against another 
 break from sage brush a piece of sheet iron 
 was fastened from the front axle to the bot 
 tom of the radiator. Fleming himself dropped 
 the engine and took out the pistons for a 
 thorough examination. To his satisfaction 
 they were found to be as smooth as glass, in 
 fact in better condition than when the engine 
 was set up. 
 
 ; This little old car," said Johnston with 
 pride as he installed a new set of dry batteries, 
 " will go some yet. She looks like the morn 
 ing after the battle, thanks to that bridge go 
 ing down, but she s all here." Then he stopped 
 and looked suspiciously at the supplies Flem 
 ing was stowing away in the tonneau. "I 
 never did seem to like canned tomatoes," he 
 said discontentedly. 
 
 Fleming smiled. " You ll like em, my boy, 
 before we re out of Wyoming. They ll be 
 
 76
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 nectar and ambrosia some day when there s 
 only alkali water to drink and nothing but 
 jack-rabbit stew on the menu. My friend of 
 the broken nose back there in the section house 
 put me on to the valuable properties of canned 
 tomatoes. He says they re food and drnk in 
 a country where you can t get either for a 
 hundred miles at a stretch." 
 
 Fleming had returned from a shopping ex 
 pedition with a boy at his heels loaded to the 
 chin, and in the tonneau besides the despised 
 tomatoes he stowed away blankets, coffee, 
 bacon, sugar, condensed milk and crackers. 
 The sharpened sprags had already been ad 
 justed to the rear axle, and the sand-tires, 
 which had been expressed to Cheyenne, were 
 strapped to the rear mudguards. The car, al 
 ready minus most of its paint and polish, had 
 the air of a scarred old veteran. 
 
 At noon there was very little left to do, and 
 Fleming had time, as he ate a hurried meal at 
 his hotel, to wonder how far west of them his 
 rival had got. As he finished his lunch a swift 
 remembrance of what the telegraph operator 
 had said to him about Heinze s " palace" came 
 to him. He wrote a note and left it with the 
 clerk for Sid; and then he inquired the way 
 to the Crystal Palace. 
 
 77
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 As he turned the second corner he came to 
 a sudden stop. Drawn up at the curb was the 
 Superba, conspicuously ready to be off; and 
 at the wheel was Vannuccini s mechanic, un- 
 disguisedly restless. 
 
 "Why, hello, Jarvis! " Fleming said. "Not 
 off yet? " 
 
 Jarvis grunted expressively and looked with 
 a faint grin at the building in front of which 
 they stood. There was no need for Fleming 
 to turn around; he knew the place was the 
 Crystal Palace, and he felt ashamed of him 
 self that he could feel rather pleased. 
 
 "Mr. Vannuccini in there?" he asked. 
 
 Jarvis humped himself over the steering 
 wheel. " Been there most of the night," he 
 said " and two hours this morning. I guess 
 the Count thinks he s back in Monte Carlo. 
 Say, you couldn t just step in there and re 
 mind him of what he s out here for could 
 you?" 
 
 " I could," said Fleming ; and he turned 
 over in his mind several things. "But I 
 won t! " he added. 
 
 He had caught the familiar beat of his own 
 motor approaching, and it put an end to any 
 quixotic impulse he might have given way to. 
 " I really haven t time," he smiled at Jarvis. 
 
 78
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 The man impatiently fingered his spark lever; 
 and as the Nero gathered speed down the 
 street, they heard an angry blast from their 
 rival s car. 
 
 Fleming looked back. In the relentless 
 morning light the Crystal Palace presented a 
 front as coldly ugly as it had been brilliantly 
 attractive the night before. In the noonday 
 sun it might have been taking a siesta for all 
 signs of life Fleming could discern. No one 
 was going in, and what was more to the point 
 no one was coming out. 
 
 "I always suspected a joint in his armor," 
 said Fleming to himself, "but I didn t know 
 it was that kind of a joint." 
 
 "What d you say?" asked Sid. 
 
 " I was talking to myself," returned Flem 
 ing ; but he looked around at his mechanic with 
 a new expression in his eyes. " Sid," he added 
 soberly, " you and I have got to win this 
 race." 
 
 Johnston stopped in the middle of a ballad 
 he was warbling. " Sure!" was all he said; 
 but Fleming knew he understood. 
 
 79
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FROM Cheyenne to Medicine Bow, not 
 as the Union Pacific, but as the crow 
 flies, is 120 miles if you keep the 
 trail. Part of the way this trail follows the 
 old route of the emigrant ; over it, perhaps ten 
 times a year, wagons venture; but for miles 
 at a stretch it is a slender thread, so faint 
 that it is difficult for anyone save a rancher 
 or sheepman to follow. From Cheyenne, 
 six thousand feet above the sea, the trail 
 drops to a great plain, in the center of which 
 is Laramie. From this plain the country 
 steadily rises to meet the vanguard of the 
 Rockies. 
 
 For twenty miles after leaving Cheyenne, 
 Fleming kept the railroad in sight as it 
 dropped down through hills which were like 
 the undulations of a great sea. With Granite 
 Canyon behind them, he decided to steer their 
 course straight away for Medicine Bow. The 
 trail lay ahead, merely two wheel ruts through 
 the scant grass, sand and sage brush; but still 
 sufficiently plain as long as the light was good. 
 
 80
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 For further guidance there was a line of tele 
 phone poles, marching away in a vanishing 
 perspective over the undulations of the prairie. 
 
 "What beats me," said Sid Johnston, who 
 had been staring back over his shoulder at in 
 tervals all afternoon, "is that we never seem 
 to get on. See that big boulder back there? 
 Well, we passed that thing half an hour ago, 
 and look at it now. Why, it looks s if I could 
 hit it with one of those tomato cans if I tried. 
 The whole bloomin landscape seems to be 
 playing tag with us, do you notice it? That 
 section house back there has come right along 
 with us and we left the railroad two hours 
 ago ! It s a durned funny country," he added 
 mournfully. 
 
 Since his last sight of the rails Sid had 
 ceased to sing. The sense of the West s incal 
 culable distances had fallen heavily upon his 
 lively spirit. To his city-bred soul there was 
 something oppressive in this silent following 
 of a deserted trail up and down, up and down, 
 meeting no living soul, seeing no living thing 
 except a little cottontail whisking into its bur 
 row or a rattler coiled on a warm patch of sand 
 beside the trail. The miraculous clearness of 
 the atmosphere, the burning white sunlight, 
 gave a sharpness of outline which was as un- 
 
 81
 
 real to Eastern eyes as a painted forest on the 
 stage. 
 
 To Fleming the bigness and loneliness were 
 like a stimulant. As mile after mile the trail 
 unwound before him he felt the exhilaration 
 of the mariner steering through strange seas; 
 the unquenchable spirit of youth rose within 
 him to meet the demands of the adventure ; he 
 felt once more sure of himself and his vic 
 tory. 
 
 Not long after sunset they lighted their 
 big searchlight; for there must be no risking 
 this thin thread they were following. Ac 
 cording to Fleming s calculations they should 
 soon see the lights of Laramie. Against the 
 velvety darkness of the sky they could no 
 longer make out the line of telephone poles; 
 but under the searchlight the trail unwound 
 plainly before them. Fifteen minutes, a half 
 hour went by; and then suddenly Fleming 
 threw out the clutch and jumped down to 
 examine the ground. 
 
 " It s mighty queer," he said as he straight 
 ened up; "the trail stops right here." 
 
 Johnston climbed down as well. It was 
 true as a schoolboy wipes a line from a slate, 
 the trail had come to an end. It was rather 
 creepy this sponging out of what had been 
 
 82
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 for them as good as a highway. All about 
 them was silence and a sort of luminous dark 
 ness. 
 
 " I remember seeing a trail branching off 
 two miles back," said Fleming; "we ll run 
 back and have a try at it. If we hadn t been 
 tenderfeet we d probably have seen that one 
 was the right trail." 
 
 But it was not the right trail. They fol 
 lowed it for ten miles, their confidence in it 
 increasing, when again like a line on a slate 
 it was wiped out, under their very search 
 light! 
 
 "No more of this," said Fleming; "I be 
 gin to feel as if I was seeing things. We ll 
 steer by the compass ; unless we ve run around 
 it, Laramie is off there somewhere to the 
 northwest." 
 
 But the difficulty of steering an automobile 
 by compass lies in the fact that it is impossible 
 to get a true bearing unless the compass is 
 taken out and away from the car. Hindered 
 by frequent stops darkness complete and baf 
 fling was upon them before they had made 
 ten miles to the northwest. As he drove at 
 low speed through the night some instinct 
 rather than a visual warning made Fleming 
 suddenly throw out the clutch and stop. Be- 
 
 83
 
 yond the radius of their searchlight the black 
 ness seemed to deepen. When Fleming went 
 ahead to reconnoiter he found that the front 
 wheels of their car had stopped just at the 
 brink of a narrow gulley which in the dark 
 ness seemed to drop down to unfathomable 
 depths. Fleming felt an uncommonly queer 
 sensation playing up and down his spine as 
 he thought of what might have been if they 
 had run two feet farther. It was a relief to 
 hear Johnston s: 
 
 " Say, I guess I ll walk the rest of the 
 way!" 
 
 Fleming turned the car about and drove at 
 random with a desperate feeling that they 
 must keep moving. Presently their search 
 light picked up another trail; they followed 
 it for five miles, only to see it sink as the others 
 had done, into the prairie. 
 
 " I m done," said Fleming, wearily. " I own 
 up that I don t know where we are. We ll 
 have to camp here for the night." 
 
 After they had looked in vain for water 
 they fried some bacon over a fire of dry sage 
 brush and rolled themselves in their blankets 
 to sleep the uneasy sleep of men unaccus 
 tomed to using the ground as a mattress. 
 Across the starlit spaces the unearthly yelp 
 
 84
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 of a coyote startled them at intervals from 
 their sleep. The darkness deepened to the 
 black hour before the dawn ; and then a somber 
 gray light stole over the prairie. It had 
 lightened to a line of scarlet at the horizon 
 before Fleming woke, with a painful stiffness 
 in all his joints. 
 
 The first thing he saw, after rubbing the 
 sleep from his eyes, was a thin line of smoke 
 rising apparently not more than three miles 
 to the north of them. It was moving slowly 
 east and could mean only one thing a loco 
 motive. Sid was wakened without ceremony; 
 their blankets were thrown into the tonneau 
 and the car was put at the best speed possible 
 towards this cheering sign of civilization. 
 
 " I never saw anything that looked so good 
 to me," said Johnston as they sighted a siding 
 of the Union Pacific. In the pink morning 
 light smoke was rising from a section boss s 
 house; the boss himself stood looking after 
 an engine and caboose which vanished in the 
 distance. The section boss s wife said they 
 sure could have breakfast; and never had the 
 voice of woman sounded a pleasanter note. 
 
 They learned from the section boss that they 
 were thirty miles west of Laramie. In their 
 nocturnal ramble they had skirted Sheep 
 
 85
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Mountain; and zigzagged nearly the distance 
 to Medicine Bow, which now lay fifty miles 
 to the north of them. When asked to explain 
 the mystifying behavior of the trails they had 
 followed during the night, the section boss 
 laughed. 
 
 " They wasn t trails ; anybody but a tender 
 foot would know they was just old sheep- 
 wagon tracks, made when the herders drove 
 the sheep out in the fall. Of course they 
 don t go anywhere couldn t you tell that by; 
 the way they was worn?" 
 
 Fleming admitted he had not been able to 
 do so; and he listened respectfully while the 
 section boss and his wife piled directions upon 
 him anent the trail to Medicine Bow. But he 
 did not intend to dally any longer with so 
 coquettish a thing as a trail. Medicine Bow 
 lay to the north, and he had his compass. 
 Keeping in sight a line of hills he knew to 
 be Snowy Mountains, he struck bodly out 
 across country. The difficulties of the way he 
 found to be not inconsiderable, for numerous 
 small streams vein the Elk Mountain country, 
 fords are uncertain and often treacherous, and 
 here and there a spring freshet has washed 
 out gulches to the depth of twenty or thirty 
 feet. Twice their windlass and cable came 
 
 86
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 into use; and once they crossed a deep and 
 narrow canyon near a spur of the Union 
 Pacific on two railroad ties. 
 
 It was early afternoon when, nearly ex 
 hausted, they sighted Elk Mountain rearing 
 its head through the clear air. They were 
 coming into the land of the antelope and 
 prairie hen. Also the pervasive sage brush 
 seemed with each mile to grow stronger and 
 more difficult to dodge. At four o clock they 
 passed the tin cans and old boots which form 
 the fringe of Medicine Bow. 
 
 Sunday night in Medicine Bow is a time of 
 abandonment to all social delights. There is 
 only one street in the " town," but wide open 
 to this thoroughfare are the Happy Home sa 
 loon and others as skillfully named. Every 
 sheep and cattle ranch for a vast circle around 
 is hilariously represented. Tongues and pens 
 have sung the "toughness" of this handful 
 of saloons; no novel of Western life is com 
 plete without a chapter devoted to Medicine 
 Bow; it has even been touched up for theatri 
 cal purposes. But to Fleming it seemed the 
 f orlornest place he had ever been in. In front 
 of a wooden building which had a false front 
 to represent a second story, a cowboy sprawled 
 on his horse talking to a girl in a red shirt- 
 
 87
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 waist who leaned to him from a window under 
 a sign bearing the legend: 
 
 " Hot lunch and bakery. Meals by the day 
 or week." 
 
 There were so many saloons that Fleming 
 wondered where the population lived. A lan 
 guid individual or two leaned against the 
 wooden fronts of these convivial centers; in 
 the clean golden light of sunset everything 
 seemed somnolently waiting. Then suddenly, 
 as if the honk of his horn was a cue on the 
 stage, the cowboy s bronco began to buck 
 viciously and the street filled with men. The 
 languid individual put his head in at a win 
 dow and yelled: 
 
 "Hi, boys! here s another!" 
 
 Fleming had no time to reflect what " an 
 other " might mean before they were swarm 
 ing over the car. They sat on the running 
 board and piled six deep in the tonneau, 
 clamoring for a ride. Fleming saw at once 
 the uselessness of remonstratina- with a crowd 
 
 zij 
 
 so uproariously bent on diversion. He asked 
 if they were all there, and they pointed out 
 the cowboy whose horse had taken him career 
 ing over the prairie at first sight of the car. 
 "Poor George! he d like to ride with you," 
 
 88
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 they said, " but he seems to be in a hurry. 
 And the s two greasers in th Happy Home 
 that re patchin th mselves up from a knife 
 fight. They can t come; but we re all here. 
 Now let her out a notch." 
 
 Fleming circled twice around town, spilling 
 passengers at each sharp corner an incident 
 received with yells of delight by those who 
 stuck on and then drew up at what they 
 informed him was the boarding-house. 
 
 The mistress of the boarding-house had a 
 shrewd eye and an exaggerated pompadour. 
 She was probably thirty, but life and the 
 merciless winds of the West had served her ill ; 
 she looked forty. She welcomed Fleming 
 with languid interest. Supper would be 
 ready, she told him, in fifteen minutes. 
 When he asked if he could have a room in 
 which to clean up a bit, she looked offended, 
 but showed him to a tiny bedroom opening off 
 the long dining-room. On a pine stand there 
 was a washbowl and a pitcher probably the 
 only ones in the house. The pitcher was empty, 
 and as Mrs. Maguire returned with it full, 
 she looked at him with a puzzled expression. 
 Then she retired to the door, where she leaned, 
 staring at him thoughtfully. She was plainly 
 
 89
 
 not going to leave him to his ablutions; so 
 Fleming poured water into the bowl and took 
 some soap from his suitcase. 
 
 " The was some soap in the dish," she said 
 absently, " if them girls ain t used it all up." 
 Fleming replied, but she did not hear him. 
 She was turning over something in her mind. 
 
 "Where was you born?" she said presently. 
 Fleming named his native town. 
 
 "I knew it!" she cried; and there was 
 something in her tone that made Fleming turn 
 to look at her. The hard lines of her face 
 had melted into a hungry look; she came a 
 step or two into the room. 
 
 " I was born there, too! " she said. " I knew 
 I d seen you before. You used to pass our 
 place every day; that was ten years ago, but 
 I m a great hand fer faces. Sav, who runs 
 The Oasis now?" 
 
 Fleming could have laughed at the ques 
 tion, but for something pathetic and wistful 
 in the woman s tone. He told her he had not 
 been in his native town for some years and 
 was ignorant of the present ownership of the 
 famous saloon. He asked why she wished to 
 know. 
 
 "My father used to run The Oasis!" she 
 declared, and it was as if she said her father 
 
 90
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 had been Mayor, or president of the bank. 
 Yes, indeed, we owned The Oasis, and it was 
 the swellest place in town then. Fixtures an* 
 pictures all brought from New York. Say, 
 do you know what s become of Fritz s place 
 next the theater? And Jimmy Burk 
 d you know him? how s he doing? " 
 
 She pushed her pompadour back from a 
 face that had become all at once alive with 
 interest, and sat down on the edge of the 
 bed. 
 
 For half an hour she questioned Fleming 
 about her native town, and old acquaintances 
 in that shady stratum of society which she 
 evidently looked back upon as a lost paradise. 
 She talked, with her hungry eyes fixed upon 
 Fleming s face, until the increasing rattle of 
 dishes in the dining-room brought her out of 
 the past. 
 
 "I gotta see about supper," she said. At 
 the door she turned back with an air of 
 apology which sat oddly on her defiant face. 
 
 " This place I m runnin ain t The Oasis," 
 she said; "but the best we ve got is yours, 
 Mr. Fleming." 
 
 At supper she proved her sincerity by an 
 attention to himself and Johnston that 
 brought down upon them the frankly; cynical 
 
 91
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 amusement of the others at the long table. 
 Under cover of a laugh at the expense of the 
 red-haired waitress, Johnston told Fleming 
 that he had run across Vannuccini s mechanic 
 in the street. He had learned from him that 
 the red car was standing, ready for departure, 
 at the back of the boarding-house. 
 
 " Vannuccini got in here at noon," Sid in 
 formed him. " He was smart enough to get 
 a cowboy in Cheyenne for pilot ; that s how he 
 beat us. But I got it out of Jarvis that he 
 had to put in a new connecting rod, and while 
 he was doing that Vannuccini skidded into one 
 of those joints on the Boulevard out there 
 and he s there now." 
 
 "Roulette?" 
 
 "That s what it looks like. You d ought 
 to see Jarvis phiz he s wild." 
 
 Fleming pushed back his chair. " They 
 tell me it s a good trail from here to Raw- 
 lins," he said thoughtfully. "How s the 
 car?" 
 
 Johnston followed him to the door eagerly. 
 " Say, let s slide out. There s going to be 
 a moon; we could make Rawlins before day 
 light and be eighty miles to the good. Shall 
 I bring the car around? " 
 
 Fleming considered; but someone touched 
 92
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 him on the elbow. The mistress of the board 
 ing-house leaned in the doorway. For a femi 
 nine reason she had made a toilet and looked 
 a year or two younger in a white shirt waist 
 with a red bow at her throat. 
 
 "Is that a friend of yours over in Monte s 
 place? " she asked. 
 
 She put the question casually, but she low 
 ered her voice as she did so. 
 
 "The Italian?" said Fleming. 
 
 "The fellow that come in the red automo 
 bile," she returned. " If he s a friend of 
 yours, you d better get him out of Monte s 
 place. He s been playing there since he blew 
 in here and he don t lose like a man has to 
 if he wants to be popular out here. The 
 boys" (she looked over her shoulder into the 
 dining-room) , " they ve fixed it to have a little 
 fun with him to-night and the boys ain t 
 gentle when they once get started." 
 
 Fleming reflected : could he call Vannuccini 
 a friend of his? 
 
 "We could make pretty good use of an 
 eighty-mile start, Mr. Fleming," said Johns 
 ton at his elbow. 
 
 From where he stood Fleming could see the 
 road to Rawlins stretching towards the fading 
 light of the west. He looked over his shoul- 
 
 93
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 der at the noisy crowd that was gulping down 
 its last cup of coffee at the long table; they 
 certainly did not look gentle. 
 
 Yes," he said slowly, " I guess you can 
 call Vannuccini a friend of mine. Which 
 way is Monte s place?"
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PLAYING opposite to Vannuccini in 
 Monte s place was a one-eyed man, 
 an excellent understudy to Captain 
 Hook. His one eye small and of an icy blue 
 observed Fleming when he entered the place ; 
 if the others at the table saw him likewise, 
 they made no sign. Vannuccini had evidently 
 got past seeing or hearing anything around 
 him. He played with an intense absorption 
 in the game, silently, and with the true 
 gambler s avidity. If, as the mistress of the 
 boarding-house hinted, he had been losing 
 during the afternoon, he was plainly ahead 
 of the game now. The chips were stacked at 
 his elbow, and there was something in the ugly 
 hump of the croupier s shoulders that told 
 Fleming the luck was not all with the West. 
 
 Fleming asked for a drink at the bar and 
 looked around him. Just behind Vannuccini 
 the bartender had lighted a kerosene lamp and 
 pulled a pair of dirty red curtains over the 
 front window. Fleming noticed there was 
 another uncurtained window at the side of 
 
 95
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 the room, just back of the dealer. In the 
 corner nearest the bar two Mexicans and a 
 cowboy were at the crap table; the men from 
 the boarding-house strolled in by twos and 
 threes. Fleming was wondering where Jar- 
 vis was, when he caught a glance that passed 
 between the croupier and the one-eyed man. 
 It was plainly a signal. The latter leaned 
 back in his chair and yawned. 
 
 "Oh, me gran mother! " he said. "This 
 is a slow game ! " 
 
 Fleming moved carelessly around till he 
 stood with his back to the window. The room 
 had grown suddenly quiet. There followed 
 a conversation between the one-eyed man and 
 the dealer in the jargon of the cattle country 
 which everyone in the room, except the East 
 erners, understood. Fleming could make out 
 only its tone which was not complimentary. 
 The cowboys from the boarding-house pressed 
 closer and laughed uproariously as he of the 
 one eye drawled: 
 
 " Shall we vend his brand, boys? " 
 
 Vannuccini had waited with Latin polite 
 ness for the game to go on. He now rapped 
 sharply on the table as he intimated that he 
 covered the cloth. 
 
 " Oh, you do, do you?" said the man oppo- 
 96
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 site. "Well, I guess maybe you don t dast! " 
 The palpable insult would have warned any 
 one but a rank outsider that the room was 
 playing him for a fight. But Vannuccini 
 only stared. His black eyes were brilliant 
 with anger. He was at least no coward. He 
 rapped sharply on the table with his big seal 
 ring, and said: 
 
 "You lie, sir!" 
 
 There was only a second between that re 
 mark and the uproar that followed, but in that 
 instant Fleming was aware that the window 
 had been thrown up from the outside and a 
 voice whispered at his back, sharply: 
 
 " Get down ! they re goin to shoot up the 
 lights!" 
 
 Fleming dropped to the floor instinctively; 
 and over his head the room resounded with the 
 crack of six-shooters as the three lamps in the 
 place crashed into darkness. Amidst the hub 
 bub Fleming heard an Italian oath; he threw 
 himself toward it through a tangle of legs. 
 Vannuccini was in his leathers just as he had 
 driven in that afternoon, and Fleming knew 
 him at once when he touched his arm. The 
 Italian had put his back to the wall and was 
 striking out valiantly right and left. Flem 
 ing seized his arm and called him by name, 
 
 97
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 telling him to make for the window. In the 
 flash from a six-shooter, whose discharge shat 
 tered the top panes of their window, Fleming 
 saw the mistress of the boarding-house. She 
 looked merely anxious and not at all fright 
 ened. In the uproar and confusion Fleming 
 crouched down and made his way close by the 
 wall to the window. Before the next pistol 
 shot he was shoving Vannuccini outside. The 
 mistress of the boarding-house was at their side 
 instantly. 
 
 You gotta run for it," she said; "come 
 on this way." 
 
 They followed her in the darkness through 
 the back premises of a second saloon and thus 
 to the rear of the boarding-house. While they 
 were yards away Fleming heard the purr of 
 his motor and knew that Johnston was ready 
 for them. They had barely reached the Nero 
 when they heard the yells and drunken laugh 
 ter of the crowd in Monte s place as it burst 
 out into the street. There was a crescendo 
 note in their merriment that told their direc 
 tion plainly. 
 
 You d better move on," said the mistress 
 of the boarding-house. "Run through that 
 vacant lot there and you ll strike the street 
 ahead of the gang." 
 
 98
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Without ceremony Fleming pushed Van- 
 nuccini, who was swearing Italian vengeance 
 and shaking his fist toward the sound of the 
 approaching enemy, into the tonneau of the 
 Nero. As he followed he pressed some money 
 into the woman s hand with a hasty word of 
 thanks for her intervention. But before he 
 had thrown in the clutch she had climbed on 
 the running board and was pushing the money 
 back into his hand. 
 
 " I don t want it," she gasped " not from 
 you you knew The Oasis." 
 
 She had dropped off and slipped into the 
 darkness before Fleming could speak. In an 
 instant they were bumping over the vacant lot 
 toward the street, and the yells of their 
 late friends sounded at their back. Fleming 
 looked behind and saw that Jarvis had slipped 
 out from the shadow of a house with the red 
 car and was close at their heels. The crowd 
 from Monte s place saw him just as he was 
 vanishing into the dark at the fringe of the 
 town. With a whoop of chagrin they emp 
 tied their guns in his direction and made a 
 rush for their horses. Their shots nicked 
 the paint from the red Superba and whistled 
 over the head of the unfortunate Jarvis. 
 Truly, as the mistress of the boarding-house 
 
 99
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 had said, the boys were not gentle when they 
 started out for fun. 
 
 Fleming threw in his high speed, for in 
 spite of the fact that it appeared on the sur 
 face a drunken joke, he realized that there had 
 been something more than fun in the atmos 
 phere of Monte s place. What provocation 
 Vannuccini might have given them he did not 
 know, but from all appearances he had suc 
 ceeded in stirring up a great deal of the latent 
 ire of Medicine Bow. 
 
 When the lights of the town twinkled small 
 behind them, Fleming stopped and Vannuc 
 cini climbed into his own car. There had been 
 very little conversation as they proceeded. 
 Vannuccini, snug and safe in the tonneau, had 
 murmured, "My poor mechanic! " as he heard 
 the gamesome gun play behind him; but it 
 did not seem to occur to him to utter thanks 
 for his own deliverance from what might have 
 proved a joke with a serious ending. 
 
 He descended, when Fleming intimated 
 that he might do so safely, with a suave word 
 of acknowledgment for the use of Fleming s 
 car. Then he climbed to his seat, took the 
 wheel from Jarvis, and with a polite " Permit 
 me!" drove ahead of the Nero and whizzed 
 off into the darkness. 
 
 100
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Johnston threw himself back with a moan 
 of disgust. " Say," he exclaimed, "wouldn t 
 you think he d have the decency to give us 
 the road when you ve just pulled him out of 
 a mix-up like that!" 
 
 Fleming said nothing, hut his face went 
 white under its sunburn. He savagely pressed 
 down on the throttle till the staunch little car 
 was bouncing over the decidedly indifferent 
 road at a rattling pace. The great harvest 
 moon came up and flooded the plain with its 
 unreal white light; ahead of them, growing 
 very gradually smaller, and now and then 
 going out altogether as a dip in the trail hid 
 it, they could see the powerful searchlight of 
 the big Superba. A coyote barked from a 
 distant bluff ; once they descended into a wide, 
 saucerlike valley where in the moonlight a 
 thousand head of cattle lay. An hour before 
 the dawn they reached Rawlins, where they 
 allowed themselves six hours for rest and the 
 overhauling of the car. 
 
 Bending over his map in the Ferris Hotel at 
 Rawlins, Fleming remarked to his mechanic 
 that judging from the number of towns scat 
 tered along the Union Pacific they would have 
 no difficulty getting gasolene and water on 
 the next stage of their journey. A keen- 
 
 101
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 eyed, long-legged man in a sombrero and a 
 rusty frock coat sat near them, frankly listen 
 ing to their conversation. When Fleming s 
 remark about the towns along the Union 
 Pacific came to his ear he slouched down in 
 his chair, spat in the general direction of a 
 cuspidor, and shook with inward laughter. 
 Presently he leaned over the arm of his chair 
 and said in a gentle, Southern drawl: 
 
 " Stranger, ah you-all acquainted with the 
 .Union Pacific?" 
 
 Fleming admitted a mere bowing acquaint 
 ance with that road. 
 
 " Ah thought you-all was some ignorant," 
 the man in the sombrero went on; he rose and 
 traced with a long forefinger the line from 
 Rawlins to Granger. 
 
 "Fillmore Latham," he read, and 
 chuckled again. " They look right cute on 
 the map, don t they? But they ahn t what 
 you d call towns; nor yet hamlets. Why, my 
 son, between here an Rock Springs that s 
 130 miles there ahn t enough folks to make 
 up a prayer meetin or a lynchin bee. Those 
 cute towns on the map ah sidings, or a water- 
 tank or a cattle shute, except where they re 
 written down playful like to fill up the map. 
 Wamsutter, now, is a metropolis. The s 
 
 102
 
 thirty people in Wamsutter, if you count 
 em all. Bitter Creek, a little further along, 
 crowds it ha d with a population of five. 
 The rest of those names are mostly to orna 
 ment the map. Yes, suh, if you re travelin 
 through the Bitter Creek country, my advice 
 to you is not to depend on those map towns. 
 Carry yo own water an grub an then yo 
 ahn t goin to be disappointed when yo ex 
 pect a busy mart an find a sign with the 
 name of a town painted on it an nothin 
 
 mo ! 
 
 This light on the next stage of their jour 
 ney they found to be of the greatest value. 
 When they slipped out of Rawlins at eleven 
 that morning, the Nero carried gasolene and 
 water to its fullest capacity. Every bolt and 
 nut had been tightened; the engine and run 
 ning gear had been looked to; the car was 
 put into ship-shape condition. The commis 
 sary department was reinforced by more 
 canned tomatoes, and extra blankets were 
 added, for they had already discovered that the 
 nights at an altitude of seven thousand feet 
 are as cold as the noons are warm. 
 
 Not many miles west from Rawlins the soil 
 becomes distinctly saline ; not even the indom 
 itable sage brush will grow here; in its place 
 
 103
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 spring up clumps of greasewood and saltsage. 
 The desert begins. 
 
 Fleming had determined to make Point of 
 Rocks that night. He knew he had the start 
 of Vannuccini out of Rawlins ; if no accidents 
 occurred and he could hold his advantage he 
 felt confident he could keep the lead through 
 the mountains that were ahead of him. After 
 a careful study of the map he decided to risk 
 leaving the railroad. Even along the Union 
 Pacific there was no trail worthy the name; if 
 instead of following the dip of the railroad he 
 steered by the compass straight across the Red 
 Desert, he would save thirty miles. 
 
 It meant boldly striking out an unknown 
 course through a region never crossed by an 
 automobile before, but in his present frame of 
 mind he felt a perfect willingness to risk any 
 danger or hardship if he could keep ahead of 
 the Superba. He put the matter to Sid 
 Johnston, explaining the risks they ran in 
 getting away from the railroad water supply. 
 
 "Sure!" said Johnston, "I know that; 
 but I d go thirsty any time to cut out that 
 Dago now! " 
 
 They filled their radiator at a tank-car on 
 a siding of the Union Pacific and adjusted 
 their sand-tires. In ten minutes the railroad 
 
 104
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 was lost to sight ; the Bitter Creek country lay 
 before them. 
 
 Time was when a man, to prove his tough 
 ness, had only to assert that he came from 
 Bitter Creek. Fleming understood the rea 
 son why after he had traversed that section of 
 Wyoming with its endless miles of sand and 
 saltsage and greasewood; empty, unproduc 
 tive, trackless. At the edge of the desert 
 Bitter Creek meanders, in the dry season a 
 trickle of nauseous, alkaline water; after a 
 rain a torrent deep enough to drown a man, 
 but still undrinkable. 
 
 In the middle of the afternoon they had an 
 unpleasant surprise they discovered the trail 
 of another automobile striking up from the 
 south and then turning west, evidently with 
 the intention of finding an easy pass between 
 a line of buttes which lay ahead of them. 
 Fleming knew before he examined the tire 
 tracks that it was the Superba. Vannuccini 
 had probably left Rawlins immediately after 
 them; apparently he had traveled south of 
 their route and found better going, for though 
 the trail was fresh and distinct, he must be at 
 least five miles ahead of them. In grim 
 silence they settled down to the task of over 
 taking their rival. 
 
 105
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 The sun was beginning to slant across the 
 desert and Point of Rocks was thirty miles 
 south of them, when they again sighted the 
 red car. They were skirting a small but steep 
 butte when it occurred to Fleming to climb 
 to the top and reconnoiter. With a field glass 
 he was able to sweep ten miles of flat sand, 
 lying between him and Black Rock Butte. 
 As he did so, something seemed to disengage 
 itself from the tawny sand, and to move, a 
 bright spot against the background of the dis 
 tant butte. The next instant the sun glittered 
 back as from polished metal; and Fleming 
 knew he was looking at his rival s car. 
 
 But what he could not understand, as lie 
 gazed through his readjusted glasses, was that 
 there seemed to be three people out there in 
 the desert. Johnston climbed the butte and 
 said it looked to him as if Vannuccini had met 
 a sheepman or cowboy. 
 
 " But I don t see any horse," said Fleming, 
 and then hastily made his way back to his car, 
 for the glass showed him that the Superba 
 was swinging on its way once more. 
 
 ; Whoever the third fellow was," said 
 Johnston, as Fleming threw in his high speed 
 and followed in the track of the car ahead, 
 " they ve left him there." 
 
 106
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 He leveled the glass at a spot near the base 
 of the butte, then suddenly he leaned forward 
 across the dash-board with an exclamation of 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Oh, crackey," he whistled ; " it isn t a man 
 it s a girl!" 
 
 107
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 SHE stood out, a lonely figure against 
 the fantastic background of the butte, 
 facing the approaching car. Fleming 
 thought as he looked at her that he had never 
 seen a figure so finely poised, so perfectly still, 
 and yet alert. A slight breeze had sprung 
 up across the desert; it caught her scanty 
 skirt and a lock of her black hair, blowing 
 them back until she was like a small Vic 
 tory done in olive and black. She was very 
 dark. Fleming thought at first she was In 
 dian; but at a second glance he knew better; 
 she might be Spanish, or even Italian, with her 
 beautiful straight nose, her fine eyebrows, and 
 her complexion of a sort of dusky pallor. 
 She made no sound as they approached; she 
 merely held up one hand with a gesture that 
 Johnston said afterward would have stopped 
 the Empire State. There was something so 
 foreign about her that Fleming unconsciously 
 spoke very distinctly. 
 
 "Do you speak English?" he said as he 
 stopped the car. 
 
 108
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 The slightest curve appeared at the corner 
 of her lips. 
 
 "I sure do," she replied. Fleming was 
 amused and apologetic. 
 
 "Can I be of any assistance? Where is 
 your horse?" he added. 
 
 The girl pointed southwest. "He s back 
 there in an arroyo. He shied at a jack rab 
 bit and backed over with me I had to shoot 
 him," she added simply. 
 
 "And since then you ve 
 
 "Footed it," she said. Fleming stared. 
 Even he, a tenderfoot, knew something of the 
 horror of losing a horse in that trackless and 
 desolate country. But this girl stood there 
 with the air of a young stoic and told a story 
 of courage and endurance that was a revela 
 tion of the spirit of the West. 
 
 "I wanted to get to Myricks," she said; 
 and Fleming learned that " Myricks " was 
 forty miles north of where they had met her, 
 at the foot of the Continental Divide, over a 
 line of buttes and across an abomination of 
 desolation called an " alkali flat." She had 
 started at daybreak the day before from a 
 little settlement on the Union Pacific to ride 
 to Myricks. Her bronco, so she said, could 
 have made the distance a matter of some 
 
 109
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 fifty miles before dark, if the accident had 
 not occurred. 
 
 " I just had to foot it," she finished. 
 
 "Good Lord!" exclaimed Fleming, "why 
 didn t you turn back? You had only gone a 
 quarter of the distance ; you could more easily 
 have walked back than have gone on, couldn t 
 you?" 
 
 For the first time the girl looked confused. 
 She dug a little pit in the sand with one toe 
 exactly as a naughty child would have done, 
 and when she looked up her black eyes held 
 a sullen fire. 
 
 " I wanted to go to Myricks," she repeated, 
 doggedly. 
 
 Fleming forbore to question her further; 
 but there was something in the affair he did 
 not understand. When he asked why Van- 
 nuccini had not taken her in her eyes flashed 
 and she drew herself up defiantly. 
 
 "He would have took me on to Rock 
 Springs!" she cried. 
 
 "And you didn t want to go to Rock 
 Springs?" 
 
 She shook her head emphatically, "No! " 
 
 " And because you wouldn t go in his di 
 rection he left you here on foot, in the 
 desert!" 
 
 no
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " Oh, he knew you was behind him. He 
 said you d take me in if I waited." 
 
 "Thoughtful of him, I m sure," Fleming 
 said. " How did he know I wouldn t branch 
 off his trail before I reached you? What 
 would you have done then? " 
 
 The girl stared off across the desert to 
 where the foothills of the Continental Divide 
 showed a purple hue against the western sky. 
 
 " I should have kept on till I dropped," she 
 said ; and Fleming noticed how pallid her face 
 had grown in contrast to the purple black of 
 her hair. 
 
 " Well," he returned, with a hasty cheerful 
 ness, " I am here so jump in. I must make 
 Point of Rocks in two hours. From there 
 you can notify your friends- 
 He stopped, amazed, for the girl had turned 
 on her heel and was walking straight out into 
 the desert again. For an instant he stared, 
 and then he stalked after her, put his hand 
 with scant ceremony on her arm and forced 
 her to face him. 
 
 " Look here, young woman," he said, " this 
 is no pleasure trip I m on. It is extremely 
 important to me not to go a single mile out of 
 my way. You propose that I make a detour 
 of some fifty miles to take you to your friends 
 
 in
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and you are unwilling to give me a single 
 sensible reason for doing so. Do you call 
 that fair?" 
 
 The girl s eyes widened in a startled stare. 
 Then suddenly, to Fleming s consternation, 
 she became, instead of a young stoic, a pas 
 sionate Latin, her face on fire, her hands 
 clutching him, her story poured out in the 
 vivid vernacular of the West. 
 
 It became plain from the incoherent facts 
 tumbling over each other that she had good 
 reason to resist being carried back to Point 
 of Rocks, for somewhere in that immediate 
 vicinity a bridegroom and a bridal party were 
 scouring the country for a missing bride. She 
 was the bride; and from her frantic assertions 
 the would-be groom was altogether detestable, 
 loathsome and not to be borne ! 
 
 "I would walk till I dropped in my 
 tracks!" she cried, "to get out of marrying 
 that Miguel ! I said No every day for 
 three months, but my aunt (she s plumb stuck 
 on Miguel!) did everything. She called the 
 priest, she made the clothes, she got up a 
 supper! Oh, she drove me crazy! I just hit 
 the trail for Myricks!" 
 
 "Hm-m," said Fleming; " where were your 
 parents all this time?" 
 
 112
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 The girl shrugged a disdainful shoulder. 
 She made it clear to Fleming that the master 
 ful aunt was the real arbiter of her destiny. 
 Parents there were, and they lived in a vague 
 region known as the Little Snake; but they 
 had given her into the hands of the aunt to 
 be sent to school, and, evidently, safely mar 
 ried off. 
 
 The girl s only disinterested friends ap 
 peared to be Mr. and Mrs. Myrick, whose 
 present abode was a sheep wagon in the foot 
 hills of the Divide. Towards this haven she 
 had set her face, and, as Fleming could see, 
 she had set it with a reckless and passionate 
 determination. 
 
 Fleming and Sid looked helplessly at each 
 other. This was worse than a burnt-out con 
 necting rod! Fleming grew hot with rage 
 as he thought of Vannuccini speeding west 
 ward after having adroitly shifted the burden 
 of a runaway bride onto his rival s shoulders. 
 He knew that only the losing course was open 
 to him, but he would not give up without one 
 more effort. 
 
 : You won t go on with me to Point of 
 Rocks?" he asked the girl. 
 
 " I can t," she said wearily. You run 
 along," she added, with a hint of scorn in her 
 
 113
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 voice. "I ll foot it till I hit the old trail 
 
 mebbe I ll meet someone " 
 
 "Don t talk nonsense," said Fleming 
 sharply. He made room for her amidst the 
 supplies in the tonneau. "Now then, climb 
 in! And point out the quickest way to this 
 Myrick place, please." 
 
 Sid Johnston s face was a study in chagrin 
 as he pointed the car due north. But he was 
 curious also, and ten minutes after they had 
 left their westward course he stole a look at 
 their passenger. Immediately he threw out 
 the clutch and ran around to the door of the 
 tonneau. The girl lay huddled on a pile of 
 tarpaulin in the bottom of the car, uncon 
 scious. 
 
 The two men looked at each other with 
 speechless dismay. Fleming was the first to 
 recover himself. With an exclamation of 
 pity he lifted out the girl s limp form. Sid 
 frantically plunged into the tonneau for 
 brandy; they managed between them to give 
 her a swallow of the stimulant, and in a few 
 minutes her eyes slowly opened. 
 
 Fleming was not aware of the kindness 
 and pity in his gaze as he bent over her, but 
 the girl evidently saw it, for to his intense 
 embarrassment she seized his hand and put it 
 to her cheek. He could feel her tears upon it. 
 
 114
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " You are awful good to me," she said 
 weakly. 
 
 "Nonsense! Look here when did you 
 eat last?" 
 
 " Yesterday, about noon," she replied, 
 struggling to her feet. " I guess that s why 
 I m so wobbly. But I m all right now " 
 
 "Why, she s starved!" Sid exclaimed, his 
 susceptible heart touched to the depths. With 
 a face of wild concern he began to forage 
 among the supplies. Fleming helped him, 
 and in a few minutes they had the satisfaction 
 of seeing the color come back to their pro 
 tege s face with food and drink. She was 
 touchingly grateful; with a gay and child-like 
 manner she took them into her confidence as 
 she ate. Her name, she told them, was Ja- 
 cinta ; her mother was Spanish and her father a 
 Missourian rather no-account, she added 
 frankly. 
 
 She seemed to Fleming a pathetic incon 
 gruity, in her shabby corduroy riding habit, 
 with her pretty, finely cut dark face and her 
 Western slang. She had the Latin sense of 
 the picturesque, too; for her scarlet hand 
 kerchief was knotted to show her fine throat, 
 and the sombrero she wore was exactly the 
 right frame for her vivid face. 
 
 It amused him to see the unconscious 
 
 115
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 daughter of Eve come out in her as she re 
 gained her spirits. 
 
 But in the midst of their impromptu meal 
 she stopped, looked at the sky and listened an 
 instant* and then she rose hurriedly to her 
 feet. 
 
 ;< We d better hit the trail quick," she said. 
 ;c There s a big storm coming up over the 
 Divide." 
 
 At that moment only a native could have 
 predicted such a thing. The sky was still clear 
 and there was little wind. But presently, over 
 their heads, the wind began to sing; across 
 the desert the dust rose in little eddying col 
 umns. 
 
 Jacinta, who was riding beside Fleming, 
 the better to serve as guide, pointed out these 
 dancing columns. 
 
 " There s going to be a big sand storm," 
 she commented briefly. 
 
 In half an hour they were feeling the full 
 force of her prophecy. They had made per 
 haps fifteen miles to the north when Fleming 
 stopped the car and insisted on Jacinta retir 
 ing into the tonneau. In the last quarter of 
 an hour the wind had risen to an incredible 
 gale; the noise of it was like a storm at sea. 
 It scooped up the fine alkali dust and sand 
 
 116
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 from the desert, scattering it broadcast. It 
 filled the air till the car moved in a yellow 
 twilight; their faces were stung by the pelt 
 ing of the sand as if by fine whiplashes. In 
 spite of goggles it became at last an almost 
 unbearable agony to keep their eyes open. 
 
 For a few miles Fleming kept grimly at 
 the steering wheel. By shielding his face 
 with one arm he was able to keep going, 
 though it had become impossible to see more 
 than the car s length ahead in that maelstrom 
 of flying sand. When the pain of the sting 
 ing particles became unendurable, he gave the 
 wheel to Johnston and retired to catch his 
 breath under a tarpaulin. 
 
 Even with his head thus muffled he could 
 hear the increased roar of the wind. Pres 
 ently he looked out, to find that the twilight 
 had given place to a tumultuous night, through 
 which they labored like a bark in a heavy sea. 
 In the uproar he had to put his head close to 
 Johnston s to make him hear. At that mo 
 ment the storm seemed to reach its climax of 
 fury. 
 
 With one accord Fleming and Johnston 
 retired under the car, where they lay, par 
 tially sheltered, digging the sand from their 
 eyes. 
 
 117
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 As they lay there Fleming could see the 
 sand columns rising from the ground, wheel 
 ing, advancing like furious battalions, then 
 springing into the air, to be dispersed as snow 
 is driven before the wind. But very shortly 
 his view was cut off by a drift of sand which 
 was steadily, inch by inch, piling itself against 
 the car. In an hour they would be completely 
 buried where they lay; and in three, the car 
 itself would be engulfed. 
 
 Fleming crawled out from their shelter, and 
 Johnston followed. Armed with the shovel 
 and a tin pail they fell to work at the drifts 
 which already were piling up to the body of 
 the car. In spite of their remonstrance Ja- 
 cinta also appeared from her retreat in the 
 tonneau and fell to work on the drifts with 
 the frying pan. 
 
 When he once more took the steering wheel, 
 Fleming s face was set. He had made up his 
 mind that if any human being could do it, 
 he would keep the car going. For an hour 
 they rode in silence. For Fleming there was 
 one comparatively bright spot in the general 
 gloom of his outlook; his pet sand-tires were 
 proving all that he had claimed for them. 
 Without them the car could not have made 
 a rod in that welter of sand. He turned over 
 
 118
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 in his mind the advertisement he would work 
 up for his sand-tires when he got back to the 
 factory ; and then the reflection smote him that 
 his share in that factory was being imperiled 
 at the rate of twenty miles an hour the time 
 Vannuccini was probably making at that mo 
 ment toward the setting sun. He bent des 
 perately over the steering wheel. The car 
 made a short spurt over a spot swept clean 
 by the wind; for an instant he saw a deeper 
 line of darkness amidst the swirl of the sand; 
 then just behind him Jacinta seized his shoul 
 der and screamed. 
 
 The next instant the front of the car 
 lurched downward sickeningly; Fleming was 
 hurled across the steering wheel ; and the earth 
 seemed flying up to met him. He was con 
 scious of a yell from Johnston and then the 
 car dropped, dropped, through a nightmare 
 of darkness at the bottom of which some 
 thing hit him a violent blow. He knew one 
 second of excruciating pain; and then he 
 seemed to plunge again into abysmal depths. 
 
 119
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 OH, I can t do it!" the girl cried. 
 "Couldn t you do it? It isn t hard 
 you just give it a sharp pull, until 
 you feel the bone slip into place- 
 She stopped with a shudder and looked at 
 Sid Johnston. In the light from the fire Sid 
 was of a delicate saffron, and plainly in an 
 awful state of funk. 
 
 "My Gawd!" he groaned, "I couldn t set 
 a chicken s leg. You ll have to do it, Jacinta. 
 Look at my hand shake." 
 
 The girl s face paled. She straightened up 
 from her crouching position over the fire and 
 walked around it to where Fleming lay 
 stretched on the cushions of the car. There 
 were beads of perspiration on his forehead in 
 spite of the chill of early morning, and his 
 eyes were bright with fever. One arm lay 
 oddly outstretched on the cushions. The girl 
 winced as she looked at it. 
 
 " It s got to be done," she said to herself. 
 She had once seen two cow-punchers set a dis 
 located shoulder, but it was another thing to 
 do it herself. She felt herself getting sick 
 
 120
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and dizzy, and she looked a last appeal at Sid. 
 He had disappeared into the darkness; she 
 could hear him swearing nervously behind a 
 rock at the other end of the gulley. She gently 
 put aside the coat and shirt they had slit two 
 hours before when they first examined Flem 
 ing s injury. The shoulder was becoming in 
 flamed. Fleming had sunk into a painful 
 doze. 
 
 "It s got to be done," she said again, and 
 called Sid. " Put your knee there, under the 
 arm," she commanded. "Now hold his other 
 shoulder down, hard; don t let him move." 
 
 IVery gently, but with hands as firm as steel, 
 she moved the arm until she felt the bone slip 
 back into its socket, then she stood up, trem 
 bling. But her surgery had been effective; 
 when they brought Fleming back to conscious 
 ness he no longer raved of disasters and a lost 
 race, but demanded to know where he was and 
 what had happened. 
 
 " You re at the bottom of a fifteen-foot ar- 
 royo," Jacinta informed him. "And you re 
 to keep still, and don t talk." 
 
 Fleming shut his eyes ; he was afraid to ask 
 about the car. At last he looked at Johnston, 
 who knelt on the ground beside him. 
 
 " Is it all up with us, Sid?" he whispered. 
 121
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 A grin swept over Johnston s anxious face. 
 "Oh, Lord, no! "he said. 
 
 You never saw the beat of that car for 
 standing a bruising, Mr. Fleming. Broke off 
 one lamp and smashed a mudguard and run 
 ning board; snapped the truss rod, knocked 
 the steering gear a point or two to larboard, 
 and ripped off a tire but otherwise she s all 
 righto! I m going to get to work at her just 
 as soon as it s light; don t you worry." 
 
 " But, Sid what s the matter with my 
 shoulder? " 
 
 Jacinta appeared at that moment and 
 begged him not to talk. He was going to 
 have some hot coffee and then he was to rest 
 so that he would have strength to be moved. 
 An inviting program! Fleming turned his 
 face to the big boulder at the foot of which 
 he lay and his heart was like lead within him. 
 His shoulder was one burning ache; and his 
 head was exceedingly queer. He heard Jacinta 
 and Sid talking as they prepared their break 
 fast ; the fire of dry sage brush crackled cheer 
 fully at his back, and presently he saw the red 
 light of sunrise creep into the arroyo. 
 
 Then he remembered Vannuccini. With a 
 feverish effort he twisted himself onto his un 
 injured arm and half arose. He saw Jacinta 
 
 122
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 run toward him. Her arm about him was the 
 last thing he remembered before he plunged 
 once more into the depths of unconscious 
 ness. 
 
 After an anxious conference it was decided 
 that Fleming should be got to the Myricks 
 as soon as possible. As morning dawned, Ja- 
 cinta was able to get her bearings, and she 
 declared they were not more than five miles 
 from the sheep-wagons. While she packed up 
 the cooking outfit and looked after Fleming, 
 Sid had been working at the car to such good 
 effect that about noon he announced they could 
 go on. At the lower end of the arroyo he was 
 able to make an ascent to the level of the 
 desert; between them they managed to get 
 Fleming into the car; and driving very care 
 fully they made out, an hour later, the first 
 foothills of the Divide. 
 
 A morning of sunshine and breeze had suc 
 ceeded the tempestuous evening; presently 
 they saw a grayish blur, like a cloud shadow, 
 drifting with a movement almost impercepti 
 ble across the hills. It was the sheep, three 
 thousand of them, grazing slowly northward. 
 Two miles farther and the white canvas of 
 the sheep-wagons gleamed out in a snug fold 
 of the hills. 
 
 123
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Living in a sheep-wagon breeds the laconic 
 habit of a lighthouse keeper. The Myricks 
 said little and asked no questions, but their 
 hospitality was of the very best brand. They 
 bore Fleming into the " bedroom " of the sec 
 ond wagon with an instant kindness that won 
 his heart, and then Mrs. Myrick proceeded to 
 cook them a dinner that lived in Sid Johns 
 ton s memory for days to come. 
 
 It was Mrs. Myrick s opinion that Fleming 
 ought to have a doctor. As far as they could 
 tell, the shoulder had been set well enough; 
 but there was a mounting fever, and Fleming 
 was continually dropping off into a state of 
 semi-consciousness, in which he talked wildly 
 of the race and begged them to start on at 
 once. 
 
 " There s Doc Chanler at Rock Springs," 
 said Jacinta. But the Myricks looked at each 
 other dubiously. 
 
 * The fellers on Petersen s ranch are lay in 
 fer him," said Myrick. " I dunno whether 
 he ll dast to come up into these parts er not. 
 Count of the shindig around Seaton s Pass," 
 he added. Jacinta evidently understood the 
 reference. 
 
 " He ll come," she said decidedly. "Who ll 
 go for him?" 
 
 124
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 She looked at Johnston. Sid tried to appear 
 cheerful. 
 
 "How many blocks is it?" he asked. 
 
 :< Thirty miles from here to Point of 
 Rocks," replied Jacinta. 
 
 " If you go straight," added the sheepman. 
 
 Sid was of the opinion that alone he would 
 be hopelessly lost inside of five miles; it was 
 clear that he must have a guide. Myrick him 
 self could not go; Mrs. Myrick did not know 
 the trail through the foothills; there was only 
 Jacinta left. 
 
 Her eyes widened with dismay as she took 
 in the situation. Point of Rocks meant for 
 her a return to a dangerous locality. Some 
 where in the vicinity raged the dreaded aunt 
 and disappointed bridegroom. But here, un 
 der her eyes, lay Fleming, suffering and in 
 need of help ; and in her heart was the memory 
 of a certain look of pity and kindness he had 
 given her. Jerry was not to know till after 
 ward the lively part in his affairs his uncon 
 scious tenderness toward the little runaway 
 bride was to play. He lay just now in a 
 feverish sleep. Jacinta looked once at his 
 flushed face and then she said: 
 
 ; We d better hit the trail if we re to get 
 back here to-night." 
 
 125
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Afterwards, Sid Johnston was able to de 
 scribe his run for the doctor with a spirit that 
 would have done credit to the ride of Paul 
 Revere. But at the time his heart was as 
 water within him. Bereft of Fleming s 
 knowledge and resource, the mechanic devel 
 oped a strange sort of a stage fright. In these 
 desolate and forbidding wastes objects lose 
 their perspective and become after a time hallu 
 cinatory. Twice that afternoon Johnston 
 threw out the clutch and brought the car to a 
 standstill because of what he supposed to be a 
 dog or a coyote in the way. When he had 
 brushed his hand over his eyes, the thing dis 
 appeared and only the undulating sand with 
 its patches of saltsage or clumps of grease- 
 wood stretched before him. At his right ran 
 the sandhills, some of them fantastically 
 shaped as if molded by the gigantic forces 
 of the upper air. Once they ran for miles at 
 the edge of an alkali "flat" the dry bed of 
 some prehistoric lake, in the caked alkaline 
 dust of which no living thing can exist. And 
 always about them were the dead silences of 
 the desert. 
 
 Jacinta, who knew every fold of the foot 
 hills, every butte and basin between the sheep 
 country and Point of Rocks, was an excellent 
 
 126
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 guide. She used her knowledge so skillfully 
 that three hours after they left the sheep- 
 wagons they saw a thin line of smoke on the 
 eastern horizon. It was a westward-bound 
 passenger train on the Union Pacific; and five 
 minutes later they sighted the half dozen 
 houses which is Point of Rocks. 
 
 It was decided on account of Jacinta s shy 
 ness about being seen in " town " that she 
 should wait in the car a short distance east of 
 the station while Johnston went on to the doc 
 tor s house. When she heard the incoming 
 train she hid behind the car, making herself 
 small on the off running board. Thus she was 
 not aware that the automobile, a conspicuous 
 object amidst the sand and sage brush, was 
 arousing considerable interest among the pas 
 sengers at the windows of the last Pullman. 
 
 As the train stopped to take on water at 
 the tank east of the station a very pretty girl 
 sat alone on the observation platform of the 
 last Pullman. Her position brought the lonely 
 blue motor in a direct line with her preoccu 
 pied gaze. She looked at it casually, once. 
 Then she rose to her feet and stared ; then she 
 opened the door of the vestibule swiftly, and 
 ran across the intervening stretch of sand to 
 wards the motor car. 
 
 127
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 The next instant, without a note of warning 
 or farewell, the train glided silently away from 
 the water tank, swept through Point of Rocks 
 and became a lesson in perspective across the 
 desert. No one heard the startled cry of the 
 pretty girl in gray except an equally pretty 
 girl in brown corduroy and leather who started 
 up from the opposite side of the car and said : 
 
 "Who are you?" 
 
 128
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 ON the day when Fleming prepared for 
 his run across the Wyoming desert 
 Betty and her father had arrived in 
 Hanna, thirty miles east. Their presence 
 there was a tribute to Betty s power of in 
 veiglement. She had begun by exhibiting a 
 sudden enthusiastic curiosity concerning her 
 father s mining interests in Wyoming. Then, 
 when he remained unfired by her zeal, she had 
 taxed him with a reprehensible lack of business 
 spirit. At last one morning Hiram D. Al 
 bright had looked across the table at his Betty, 
 with an expression that started out to be severe 
 and was spoilt by a chuckle. 
 
 "I never saw your beat for hanging onto 
 an idea, Betty! " he had said. " If you ll give 
 me a rest on the subject of mines I ll buy two 
 tickets to Portland to-morrow." 
 
 Thereupon she had run around the table 
 and hugged him ecstatically. 
 
 " There s no sense in it, though," he had 
 added, trying not to look as if he liked being 
 managed by Betty. " I don t know why a girl 
 
 129
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 should take so much interest in an auto race, 
 any way. When I was young, girls " 
 
 But as before in their arguments he had 
 never got beyond this point, for Betty always 
 put her pretty hand over his mouth and 
 stopped him. She had for some mysterious, 
 girl s reason set her heart on being in Port 
 land for the end of the transcontinental race, 
 and, being her father s "one fair daughter," 
 she had, as usual, had her way. 
 
 They were in Hanna two days. Betty s 
 father said that if he had been dragged out 
 there on a pretense of looking at coal mines, 
 he was going to do it; and Betty could make 
 the best of Hanna s one hotel for a couple of 
 days. 
 
 The first day she had found Hanna rather 
 diverting; but the second dragged. When the 
 Eastern mail came in at noon, her father had 
 not got back from Mine No. 7 ; but she found 
 distraction in the letters that had followed 
 them from New York. On the heels of this 
 post came a telegram, also forwarded, which 
 Betty read and turned scarlet over. 
 
 It was a telegram from Vannuccini, dated 
 Monday (this was Tuesday) and sent to her 
 in New York from Rock Springs, Wyoming. 
 
 When she had finished it she sat for several 
 
 130
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 minutes staring at it. In all her unclouded life 
 Betty Albright had never known so many con 
 flicting emotions. She was deeply hurt; she 
 was mortified; and she told herself she was 
 dreadfully angry. But there was another ex 
 pression in her eyes. It was as if a shock had 
 revealed to her an emotion she had not dreamed 
 herself capable of harboring. For the first 
 time in her favored and happy existence Betty 
 Albright was jealous. 
 
 When Vannuccini composed his telegram 
 to Miss Albright he had not the least idea that 
 it might prove for him a boomerang. He had 
 obeyed a primitive law of cunning when he 
 inserted a cleverly casual sentence in that tele 
 gram to the effect that Fleming had gone off 
 somewhere into the wilds with a beautiful 
 Spanish girl! 
 
 He had not stated it so badly as that. His 
 lengthy wire was effective more by what it left 
 out than by what it revealed. But in spite of 
 its cunning it worked for the absolute down 
 fall of its author. Betty Albright was too 
 honest herself to tolerate treachery for an in 
 stant ; but, alas, she rose to the bait ! That was 
 where she showed herself at one with the 
 Eternal Feminine. She would never forgive 
 Vannuccini for his tale-bearing; but to the 
 
 131
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 tale itself she paid a most inconsistent atten 
 tion. It came as a positive shock to find that 
 she could be so stung by anything Jerry Flem 
 ing might do. Ever since they were boy and 
 girl she had accepted Jerry s unswerving loy 
 alty as a matter of course. By all his boyish 
 love-making she had never been stirred; but 
 now at this hint of Vannuccini s she found her 
 self regarding Fleming with eyes, as it were, 
 wide open. Had he become more interesting? 
 
 The hot tears of rage and shame sprang 
 to her eyes. But for whom were they? Her 
 self, or Vannuccini, or Fleming? She herself 
 could not have told, but she knew that some 
 instinct moved her to tear Vannuccini s tele 
 gram into fragments as she heard her father s 
 voice below. Whatever she herself might think 
 of the affair, it would be unbearable to have 
 her father believe that Jerry had run away 
 with a pretty Spaniard. If the story was 
 true, then she would have to own that her 
 father s lack of confidence in Jerry was justi 
 fied; but she meant to put off the humiliating 
 moment as long as possible. 
 
 That afternoon they had set out once more 
 on their westward way. An abstracted silence 
 fell on Betty. She sat staring out at the 
 monotonous flying miles of desert country; 
 
 132
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 her father retired under a large white hand 
 kerchief and went to sleep. Presently she 
 slipped out to the observation platform of 
 their coach. She was quite alone on the plat 
 form, and she selected a comfortable chair 
 with the determination to think of nothing but 
 " The Ebb-tide," which she was reading for 
 the second time. She told herself there was 
 probably not a word of truth in that story of 
 Jerry and the pretty senorita . . . anyway, 
 she wouldn t think about it . -. ,. of course, 
 she had always known that Jerry was im 
 petuous . . . 
 
 Just here she was aware that the train had 
 come to a standstill. She looked out across 
 the desert. Then she sprang to her feet with 
 an exclamation of surprise. She recognized 
 the blue car, standing apparently deserted out 
 there among the sage brush. The train had 
 stopped to take on water ; there would be time 
 for her to just run across to the car and sur 
 prise Jerry. Without a second thought she 
 had opened the door of the vestibule and was 
 speeding toward the motor car. 
 
 133
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 WHEN Sid Johnston came back 
 from his quest of the doctor he 
 advanced around the Union Pa 
 cific water tanks whistling cheerfully, a pail 
 of water in one hand and a five -gallon gas 
 olene tin in the other. When he was 
 within a stone s throw of the car, he suddenly; 
 set down his burden and retired behind a 
 clump of sage brush, where he doubled up 
 with silent mirth. For he recognized the Only 
 Girl at once; and in spite of the astonishing 
 unexpectedness of her appearance there he 
 grasped in part the nature of the little comedy 
 before him. 
 
 The Nero held the center of the stage. 
 Standing defiantly on the right running board 
 of the car was Jacinta; and facing her was 
 Betty Albright. There was that in the air 
 which made Johnston feel backward about in 
 truding. Plainly there had been an exchange 
 of " Who are you s ? " The girl from the East 
 looked at the girl from the Little Snake, and 
 there were certain undeniable questions in her 
 
 134
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 stare. At this point Johnston came out from 
 the shelter of his sage brush and advanced to 
 ward them. Betty came to meet him. 
 
 : You are Sid Johnston, aren t you?" she 
 said with a smile that enrolled him under her 
 banner at once. "I m afraid I m left on your 
 hands. I recognized Mr. Fleming s car from 
 the platform of the train and I thought I had 
 plenty of time to where is Mr. Fleming?" 
 
 Sid had a fatal impulse to conceal their de 
 tour of the day before, which made him stam 
 mer suspiciously over the simple statement that 
 Fleming lay thirty miles to the north with a 
 dislocated shoulder. 
 
 " A dislocated shoulder ! " gasped Betty. 
 " Has he had a doctor?" 
 
 " That s what we came down here for," said 
 Sid. " Oh, no, no he s not so to say in dan 
 ger, but he s off his head, and the fever, you 
 see " 
 
 Betty turned pale. "He might die! It 
 should have been set at once " 
 
 A sound from Jacinta made them turn to 
 look at her. She still stood on the running 
 board of the car, a small Carmen, with hostil 
 ity in her beautiful eyes. 
 
 " I set it ! " she said. It would be going too 
 far to say that Betty wished the arm had never 
 
 135
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 been set; but she was quite human. A wave 
 of conviction overwhelmed her reason. Van- 
 nuccini had been right! It was really too bad 
 of Jerry ! And after what he had said to her 
 back there in New York . . . 
 
 " We ll have to hit the trail lively, if we get 
 to Myricks before dark," Jacinta was say 
 ing. ; The doctor ll be there before we are, 
 for there s a shorter trail through the foot 
 hills." 
 
 " The doctor s going up on horseback," Sid 
 explained. " We can take you to one of those 
 houses over there, Miss Albright; and I ll wire 
 your father where you are, if you say so." 
 
 He looked from Jacinta to Betty. Betty 
 stared at the converging lines of steel rails 
 stretching away across the desert; then she 
 stole one glance at Jacinta s Castilian pretti- 
 ness and announced that she did not care to be 
 left at Point of Rocks she had decided it 
 was her duty to go along and nurse poor 
 Jerry ! 
 
 Sid stared helplessly. He ventured to re 
 mind her of her distracted father. Betty ad 
 mitted that there was a difficulty; but after a 
 moment of frowning thought she had solved it. 
 There was an operator in the station near at 
 hand. They would send a wire to her father, 
 
 136
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 who would probably not miss her until the 
 train reached the next station Rock Springs. 
 This wire would be handed him when the train 
 stopped. In it she would explain fully; she 
 would also tell him to await her at Rock 
 Springs. To guard against the telegram s 
 missing him a similar one should be sent to the 
 hotel where they had intended spending the 
 day while Mr. Albright looked after mining 
 affairs in the vicinity. 
 
 "Poor Dad!" Betty could not help smil 
 ing. " He ll be wild till one of those telegrams 
 strikes him. He ll abuse everyone dreadfully, 
 from the porter up ; but I can t help it. You 
 don t mind taking me along, do you, Mr. 
 Johnston?" 
 
 Poor Sid did mind and he didn t, when 
 Betty smiled like that. But there was a ter 
 rible moment when he wondered which girl 
 he ought to help to a seat beside the driver. 
 He need not have troubled himself. Betty had 
 recovered her aplomb. With quite a royal air 
 she took her seat in front. And Jacinta, with 
 a darkling brow, was obliged to make shift 
 amidst the impedimenta of the tonneau. 
 
 
 
 The canvas-covered sheep-wagons gleamed 
 through a velvety dusk when Sid drove the 
 
 137
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY, 
 
 blue car around the last fold of the hills. The 
 doctor s pony was hobbled with the other 
 horses and a yellow gleam of light from one of 
 the wagons showed Mrs. Myrick deftly ma 
 nipulating the frying pans. 
 
 As Betty stepped from the car a swift sense 
 of constraint seized her. All through that 
 never-to-be-forgotten drive across the desert 
 and through the foothills she had been telling 
 herself that she came from a sense of duty; 
 but she could not blind herself to a less worthy 
 emotion that made itself felt whenever she 
 looked at Jacinta. She despised herself for it, 
 but the feeling was there and it grew within 
 her as Jacinta glided past her and climbed 
 within the tiny door of the nearest wagon. 
 She stood in the dark, beside the packing case 
 that served as doorstep, and heard Fleming 
 say: 
 
 "Hello, Jacinta you re an all-right girl!" 
 
 She waited no longer. A lantern hung from 
 one of the corner uprights and in its light she 
 saw Fleming raise himself on one elbow with 
 a look on his face as if he had seen an appari 
 tion. 
 
 "Betty!" 
 
 " Well, Jerry!" she replied, putting a cool 
 hand on his forehead. 
 
 138
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "Betty dear! It isn t you, is it? " 
 
 Betty laughed. " It certainly is. Now 
 with professional coolness, " you are to lie 
 down again and I ll explain." 
 
 If Betty s eyes had not been clouded she 
 would have been convinced of Jerry s loyalty 
 by the rapturous happiness in his face as he 
 regarded her. But circumstantial evidence has 
 always a new trick up its sleeve. As she seated 
 herself on the box at the head of Jerry s cot a 
 figure stirred in the dark corner and crept to 
 ward the door. 
 
 "Wait!" Jerry called. "Jacinta, come 
 here. Betty, dear, I want you to be good 
 friends with this little girl. She s the real 
 thing; she s got more courage than most men, 
 Betty." 
 
 " I am sure she has," said Betty; and, man 
 like, Fleming took it for granted that Betty 
 knew the entire episode. He promptly dis 
 missed Jacinta and her story from his mind. 
 It was enough for him that Betty sat there, 
 that she allowed him to hold her hand in his 
 free one though with a detached coolness of 
 which he was quite unconscious in the happi 
 ness of talking to her. 
 
 That night Betty slept for the first time 
 with only canvas between her and the sky. 
 
 139
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 One wagon had been arranged for the women ; 
 and she could see through the doorway the 
 wonderful Wyoming night sky. The stars 
 hung miraculously near ; out in the foothills a 
 coyote barked, and in the distance another an 
 swered. That night and the day that followed 
 were like bits of a dream existence. The 
 limpid clearness of the air; the foothills un 
 dulating away endlessly; the afternoon siesta 
 in the shade of the wagons all were part of 
 an experience the city-bred girl would never 
 forget. 
 
 Fleming was much improved the next morn 
 ing. Betty s coming, he declared, was better 
 than all the doctors in the State. He would 
 in fact have started on their way again at 
 once if the rest of his party had not refused 
 to hear of such a thing. 
 
 "If you were a cowpunch, Fleming," said 
 the doctor, " you d have set your own arm and 
 gone on rejoicing; but you ve got too much 
 city in your bones to take liberties with a dis 
 location. If you don t fuss yourself into an 
 other fever over this race you think you ve lost, 
 you can go on to-morrow afternoon. I ll see 
 you over the Divide myself though I m about 
 as popular as a skunk at a picnic west of the 
 hills! " he added, with a grin at Myrick. 
 
 140
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Myrick nodded. " Better stay this side the 
 Divide," he remarked. 
 
 "Well, I tell you," returned the doctor 
 slowly, " when trouble is looking for me I 
 want to go out to meet it and get it over with 
 see?" 
 
 Jacinta looked up from the potatoes she was 
 helping Mrs. Myrick prepare for supper. 
 
 " Cal Dean and the outfit from Petersen s 
 were in town last week," she said. " They re 
 sure looking for you so they said. I heard 
 that Cal made a speech in Ben Day s place 
 and showed off the Krag bullet hole in his 
 arm 
 
 :e The army Krag makes a nice, neat hole," 
 commented the doctor. 
 
 " How did the gentleman get a Krag bullet 
 hole in his arm?" asked Betty, who had been 
 listening with her chin in her hand. 
 
 The doctor laughed. "That s the point of 
 the story, Miss Albright. If the authorities 
 down at Cheyenne knew where Cal got his 
 bullet hole he d be in jail along with five of his 
 friends; but he s too slippery. * 
 
 "But you know?" she hinted. 
 
 " I suspect," said the doctor. " You see, 
 Miss Albright, up here in Sweetwater there s 
 the sheep side and the cattle side. The cattle- 
 
 141
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 men hate sheep like poison. If you ve noticed 
 a hill that sheep have grazed over you ll see 
 that they have eaten everything clean to the 
 roots. A goat could scarcely get a meal off 
 the pasturage a flock of sheep leave behind. 
 For that reason, and for others it s no use go 
 ing into, the cattlemen hate to see sheep com 
 ing into the country. The day isn t so far be 
 hind us when cattlemen took the law into their 
 own hands and made things too hot for any 
 but the big breeders. But that state of things 
 has been given its death blow, and I guess I 
 can truthfully claim a little credit for giving 
 the law a leg up in Sweetwater County." 
 
 " And is that why Cal Dean is looking for 
 you?" persisted Betty. 
 
 The doctor interested her more than any of 
 the Westerners she had met. He was lean 
 and dark, with the deep black eyes of the man 
 who would go to the stake for an idea. There 
 had been a certain flash of grim humor in his 
 face when Myrick advised him to stay east of 
 the Divide that aroused her curiosity. " Is 
 Cal Dean sheep or cattle? " she asked. 
 
 " He s just a cowpunch, and as ornery a 
 specimen as any ranch in Sweetwater can 
 boast. But he s got a kind of fiery eloquence 
 that always gives him a following among the 
 
 142
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 riff-raff of the ranches. He hates me on ac 
 count of a little help I gave Jim Morse last 
 month. Jim Morse used to be a cattleman; 
 but failed in cattle and went in for sheep. He 
 turned four thousand of them onto his range 
 one week, and every cattleman for 200 miles 
 around was his enemy from that time on. 
 
 " One morning Jim woke up to find 800 of 
 his sheep shot and a good-sized bunch at the 
 bottom of a canyon with their necks broke. 
 This happened twice. Of course, Jim wasn t 
 sitting meekly at home all this time ; but what 
 could he do ? He was practically single handed. 
 The Mexican herders will run at sight of 
 a cowpunch with a gun, and Jim s range was 
 so big he couldn t be on all sides of it at once. 
 Finally one day he came down to town. He 
 dropped in at my place and I could see he was 
 plumb discouraged." 
 
 Doc, he says, I ll be down and out if 
 I can t put a stop to this thing right away. 
 Two hundred more gone last night ! 
 
 "Well, we put our heads together. We 
 kept the wires hot up to Frisco all that day. 
 The 22nd Cavalry had landed in town from 
 the Philippines the day before and it gave us 
 an idea. Two nights later Jim and I rode out 
 over the range with a couple of wagons cov- 
 
 143
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 ered supply wagons, like these, Miss Albright. 
 We had calculated just right, for about mid 
 night a bunch of cowboys the scum of four 
 ranches rode over the Divide, drove off the 
 Mexican herders and opened fire on the 
 sheep." 
 
 "They began killing the sheep?" Betty 
 gasped. 
 
 " Sure ! right and left, waded in knee deep 
 among the woolly things and shot them with 
 both hands." 
 
 " But you stopped them!" 
 
 The doctor grinned. " Well, I should say 
 so with a half dozen army Krags. Say, I 
 never saw a more successful surprise party. 
 When our men stepped out of those sheep- 
 wagons and began winging cowpunchers at a 
 thousand yards, why it was like lightning out 
 of a blue sky. As many of them as could got 
 away, but five of them were landed in a Chey 
 enne jail, and there s more than one man in 
 Sweetwater to-day with a Krag bullet wound 
 that he s hiding or boasting about, like Cal 
 Dean." 
 
 The doctor rose and stretched himself. 
 
 You mustn t think we re a lawless lot out 
 
 here, Miss Albright," he added. "Wyoming 
 
 is a Sunday school compared with what it used 
 
 144
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 to be; but in every community there s some 
 such loud talker as Cal Dean, who just has to 
 run amuck once in awhile. The best way is 
 to walk the earth as if they weren t on it " 
 
 " And keep your gun handy," interposed 
 the sheepman, who had silently joined them. 
 Betty felt there was something behind the 
 look the two men exchanged, but the conversa 
 tion turned to horses and she asked no more 
 questions. She would have liked to ask Ja- 
 cinta why the sheepman had warned the doc 
 tor not to cross the Divide, but Jacinta had 
 taken a leaf from her own book. She held her 
 self silently aloof, helping Mrs. Myrick and 
 talking only to the doctor. As the drowsy 
 heat of the day passed Betty wondered if she 
 had not allowed herself to be prejudiced with 
 out cause. She was contemplating kinder ad 
 vances toward the little Wyoming Carmen 
 when a new actor made his entrance on the 
 scene and she found a fresh barb of suspicion 
 planted in her heart. 
 
 A little way above the sheep-wagons the 
 trail appears around the corner of the hills 
 and winds down a steep and precarious de 
 scent. Just at sunset she climbed this trail 
 with Sid to a point where they could see the 
 sheep grazing toward the west. On their 
 
 145
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 way back they were forced to press close to 
 the rocky side of the trail to allow a horseman 
 to pass them. He reined in his little piebald 
 broncho as he saw them, and Betty guessed 
 that he was a Mexican. His immense sombrero 
 cast a shade over his dark face and from this 
 shadow he looked down at them with small, 
 brilliant black eyes. He was dressed in new 
 clothes, of the sort Betty had never seen off 
 the stage before. He swept off his new and 
 elegant sombrero to her and showed his white 
 teeth in a smile as he passed. 
 
 They followed him down the trail. Betty 
 could see, as his horse swerved to one side, 
 that there were only two people in sight as 
 they approached the wagons; and they were 
 Jacinta and Fleming. They sat on an over 
 turned soap box laughing together over an 
 ancient copy of " Puck." When the Mexi 
 can s glance lighted upon this peaceful scene, 
 he pulled up his horse and sat for a moment, 
 rigidly staring. Then with a muttered impre 
 cation he rode toward them, flung himself 
 dramatically from his horse and poured out a 
 torrent of Spanish. 
 
 Betty saw Jacinta spring to her feet, her 
 face white, but her eyes brilliant with anger. 
 
 146
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 You Miguel!" she cried, and her hand 
 flew to a little revolver she wore at her belt. 
 Fleming put a protecting hand on her arm. 
 Betty could not hear what he said to her, but 
 she saw Jacinta make an imperative gesture 
 toward a distant rock which jutted out above 
 the trail. She turned and walked toward it, 
 and the Mexican followed. Their interview was 
 short, and as they could all see, dramatically 
 stormy. Finally the Mexican, with a sneering 
 laugh, flung an arm in Fleming s direction and 
 Betty saw Jacinta rise with her haughtiest air. 
 She spoke rapidly for an instant and then 
 she turned on her heel and left Miguel biting 
 his nails. 
 
 A few minutes later the sheepman called 
 them all to supper. Miguel, summoning an 
 air of suave good-humor, joined them. He 
 seemed determined to overlook whatever dif 
 ferences he and Jacinta might have had; and 
 he was especially ingratiating in his manner 
 to Fleming an attention Fleming received 
 with amused carelessness. 
 
 Betty watched Miguel ride off after the 
 meal with a parting sweep of his sombrero, 
 and then, regardless of Fleming s look of pro 
 test, she attached herself to Mrs. Myrick. 
 
 147
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 That night Fleming, baffled and disheart 
 ened, asked himself as he dropped to sleep, 
 why a man might master the most intricate 
 motor problem and invariably short-circuit 
 when he tried to understand a girl! 
 
 148
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A the bend in the trail Sid stopped the 
 car and they all turned back for a 
 last look at the sheep-wagons, their 
 canvas tops shining dazzling white in the 
 afternoon sunlight. Mrs. Myrick waved her 
 hand from the door of one, while leaning 
 against the tongue of the other stood a solitary 
 figure. It was Jacinta, erect and defiant, 
 scorning to wipe away, as long as they were 
 looking back, the hot tears that stood in her 
 eyes. 
 
 Just before noon that morning, Miguel had 
 ridden into camp on a fresh mount, his new 
 clothes showing signs of hard riding, but his 
 smile radiating friendliness on everyone 
 around him. He had suggested their crossing 
 the Divide through Red Rock Pass, at certain 
 seasons of the year the bed of a raging tor 
 rent, but which was just then an easily trav 
 eled cut through the mountains. As he pointed 
 out, this route would mean a winding climb 
 of three hours, but would save them twenty 
 miles in the end. Moreover, he offered to 
 
 149
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 guide them to the other end of the pass. Flem 
 ing, who had to consider not only his time but 
 his gasolene, figured that the additional fuel 
 used in hill climbing would be saved in the 
 descent, and was quite willing to try Red 
 Rock Pass. The doctor, who knew very little 
 of that section, also agreed to the Mexican s 
 proposal. It was only the sheepman who 
 hinted that the plan might not be entirely de 
 sirable. He drew the doctor one side and sug 
 gested that he leave the motor party and keep 
 to the eastern side of the Divide. 
 
 " Red Rock Pass," said the sheepman, " is 
 a mighty good place for an ambush." 
 
 The doctor laughed. "What of it? Cal 
 Dean and his outfit think I m in Rock 
 Springs." 
 
 " Mebbe ; but how do you know where 
 Miguel rode last night? " 
 
 The doctor stared. " Oh, come, Myrick," 
 he said, "your imagination s working over 
 time. I never saw the greaser before he s 
 got nothing against me ! " 
 
 You never can tell anything about a 
 greaser," replied Myrick darkly. " And this 
 automobile outfit what if there should be 
 trouble, and they should get in the way?" 
 
 "They won t. They ve got tourist fresh 
 
 150
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 branded on em, and not even Cal Dean is fool 
 enough to go round shooting up tourists." 
 
 And the sheepman said no more. With 
 Miguel as guide they had set out, and at four 
 that afternoon they reached the highest point 
 of the Divide. To Betty the climb had been 
 a succession of startling sensations. For two 
 hours they had wound around the base of 
 sandstone cliffs, hugging the rock, with the 
 mountain dropping away sheer below them to 
 terrifying depths of twilit obscurity. She had 
 clinched her hands and watched with a fas 
 cinated terror the nimble feet of Miguel s 
 broncho as it picked its way ahead of them, 
 with what appeared a perverse intention to get 
 as near the edge as possible without disaster. 
 Miguel himself seemed to regard the trail as a 
 spacious boulevard. He sang a gay little song 
 under his breath and occasionally flashed his 
 white teeth in a smile at her apprehensive face. 
 The doctor rode with the easy slouch of the 
 man who spends his days in the saddle. 
 
 In the car there was little conversation, for 
 the business of making the best of the narrow 
 margin of daylight left them was sufficiently 
 engrossing to absorb their thoughts. Occa 
 sionally in the windings of the trail they had a 
 glimpse of the plain below through which the 
 
 151
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 tributaries of the Big Sandy made ribbons 
 of faint green amidst the dun-colored land 
 scape. 
 
 A half -hour later they plunged into the 
 twilight of Red Rock Pass. On both sides of 
 them the red sandstone bluffs towered until 
 the sky above was a mere ribbon of blue. From 
 the formation of the rocks it was plain that 
 some mighty forgotten river had once forced 
 its way through this lonely pass. Lizards as 
 brilliant as jewels darted from their path; a 
 kind of waiting and listening silence hung in 
 the air. 
 
 Suddenly Miguel, who led the way, reined 
 in his horse with an exclamation. Squarely 
 across their path lay a huge boulder. There 
 was barely room for a horse to squeeze around 
 it, and the progress of the car was effectually 
 blocked. 
 
 The doctor dismounted and scanned the 
 boulder, whose path down the side of the 
 canyon was plainly marked. 
 
 " Must have fallen very lately," he said, 
 picking up a bit of fresh clay which still clung 
 to the huge rock. 
 
 Miguel declared he was desolated. He 
 himself had ridden that way but yesterday 
 and the trail was clear. 
 
 152
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Fleming s face took on its look of dogged 
 patience once more. 
 
 "We ve got to get the car over," he said 
 simply; and helped Betty to a seat on a con 
 venient rock. 
 
 In the next hour and a half Betty witnessed 
 a little exhibition of ingenuity, patience and 
 hard work that opened her eyes to some of the 
 practical difficulties Fleming and his car had 
 already overcome. 
 
 The boulder was too large for the combined 
 strength of the party to move, and as it was 
 impossible to turn the car in that narrow gorge 
 a runway had to be built up over the rock it 
 self. Under Fleming s direction a mass of 
 driftwood from the last spring freshet was 
 piled up against the rock with such loose stones 
 and earth as could be collected. After an 
 hour s hard work it seemed as if the car might 
 be run up and over the boulder. Sid took the 
 wheel and, backing the car a few feet, took a 
 flying start at the newly made road bed. 
 
 The next instant the unfortunate Nero was 
 hanging, impaled, so to speak, on the big rock, 
 stuck there on its own flywheel ! Fleming saw 
 at once what had happened. When the front 
 wheels had topped the rock and began the de 
 scent the rear wheels were still ascending. 
 
 153
 
 Their traction at once commenced to scatter 
 the newly made road bed, and immediately the 
 flywheel settled down on the boulder itself, 
 stopping the motor instantaneously. 
 
 With dark forebodings of a broken crank 
 shaft Sid tore up the flooring to ta"ke a look 
 at his beloved engine. A careful investigation 
 failed to reveal any serious damage done, and 
 Fleming drew a long breath of relief. The 
 rear wheels were carefully jacked up, rocks 
 and driftwood were piled under the tires and 
 at last after infinite difficulty the car was 
 coaxed to make the descent without further 
 trouble. 
 
 In spite of their utmost efforts to accom 
 plish their task quickly, it was dusk when they 
 resumed the journey. Once clear of the pass 
 the trail descended, a clear run of two miles 
 before it turned and disappeared behind a fold 
 of the mountains. At the top Miguel left 
 them. It was not necessary to guide them 
 further, he declared : there was only one thing 
 to remember where the trail forked they 
 must be sure to keep to the left. 
 
 Johnston lighted their big searchlight as 
 Miguel rode back with a parting wave of his 
 sombrero. Smoothly they skimmed down the 
 mountain side; their searchlight picking out 
 
 154
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 the trail with its silvery brilliancy. Where the 
 trail divided the wheel was swung over and the 
 car, according to Miguel s directions, was 
 headed up the left fork. 
 
 Half an hour later Fleming motioned to 
 Sid to stop the car. The path had grown so 
 rough that they were forced to run on low 
 speed, and even then it was frequently neces 
 sary to halt and reconnoiter. The night had 
 almost closed in upon them; the sky had deep 
 ened to a wonderful blue ; the stars hung white 
 above them. 
 
 "What do you think of this trail, Doctor? " 
 Jerry called. 
 
 " I think," said the doctor, "that in a very 
 short distance it s going to cease to be a trail. 
 But I guess you d better go on to the bend, 
 then we ll be able to see where we re coming 
 out." 
 
 Ten minutes later the question of where they 
 were to come out was settled with discon 
 certing suddenness. The car had crawled 
 cautiously around a spur in the mountain, its 
 searchlight showing faint traces of an old rock- 
 strewn trail which vanished completely be 
 yond the radius of the searchlight s beams. 
 Fleming was just about to call to the doctor 
 to ride ahead and reconnoiter when suddenly 
 
 155
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 the car pitched forward on a steep down grade. 
 A brake band had snapped and for one tense 
 instant it looked as if the chain might follow 
 suit. 
 
 There was a moment as it pitched downward 
 when the car rocked perilously from side to 
 side; then it staggered for a moment under 
 the pressure of the low speed clutch. At the 
 bottom of the trail a wall of rock seemed to 
 rise out of the darkness; there came a crash, 
 and the car stopped with a suddenness that 
 pitched everyone headlong. 
 
 Fleming s first thought was for Betty. They 
 had been obliged to put her in the tonneau 
 amidst the baggage and supplies, and he found 
 her in the bottom of the car trying to extricate 
 herself from the debris of broken cracker 
 boxes, cans of corned beef and tomatoes, while 
 one of the extra tires strapped on in the rear 
 had broken loose and was encircling her shoul 
 ders. 
 
 " Betty! Are you hurt? " he exclaimed. 
 
 " No; I only need digging out," she laughed. 
 
 Fleming hurried toward her with a light. 
 
 " Thank God," said Fleming, and " Lucky 
 tire!" he added as he helped her out. The 
 doctor came scrambling down the trail after 
 the automobile with his case of instruments. 
 
 156
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " I thought I would sure have some bones 
 to set that time," he said as he reined in his 
 panting- steed and swung himself out of the 
 saddle. 
 
 The light of the searchlight showed them 
 that they had landed in a sort of rocky cul-de- 
 sac. The car had been stopped by one side of 
 this well-like ravine. It would have been dam 
 aged to a much greater extent if the sharp 
 down grade of the old trail had not been in 
 terrupted by a stretch of level ground. As it 
 was, the poor Mountaineer had shattered an 
 other mud-guard, and the water was leaking 
 out of the radiator from a dozen wounds. 
 
 " And my solder s most gone," said Sid as 
 he ruefully gazed at the dented and sadly torn 
 piping. 
 
 Fleming and the doctor looked at each other. 
 The latter s face was grimly set. 
 
 "It looks like a trap to me," he said; "can 
 you back the car out of this hole? " 
 
 Fleming shook his head. He pointed out 
 that only the windlass and cable could get them 
 up that last steep pitch, and it was out of the 
 question to try and use them in that dark 
 pocket. There was but one thing to do; they 
 would have to make themselves comfortable 
 until the moon got high enough to light up 
 
 157
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 their ravine, then possibly they might be able 
 to use the windlass. 
 
 The doctor uncinched his saddle girths and 
 threw the bridle rein over his broncho s head, 
 then, while Fleming and Sid unloaded pro 
 visions, he set out to do some exploring. Be 
 sides the old trail down which they had come 
 there was another way out of this well of rock 
 but only a man on foot could make use of 
 it. The doctor clambered up this natural foot 
 path for perhaps twenty rods. It ascended 
 the cliffs opposite to where they had come 
 down and half way up it broadened out to 
 form a ledge twelve feet deep. With the 
 fragments of rock that had fallen there it 
 made a natural breastwork, hung balcony-like 
 against the nearly perpendicular wall of the 
 ravine. The doctor gave a chuckle of keen 
 satisfaction as he stepped upon this ledge. He 
 could see the twinkle of Fleming s lantern far 
 below him in the depths of the ravine, and out 
 lined against the luminous night sky was the 
 shoulder of the mountain with the old trail 
 notched in its rocky side. 
 
 " A neat little strategic point," said the doc 
 tor, and scrambled back to his party. 
 
 Sid had already made a pot of his incompar 
 able coffee over the faithful blow-torch, Betty 
 
 158
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 was setting forth on newspapers the tinned 
 chicken, tinned beans, more or less broken-up 
 crackers and condensed milk which was to 
 form their meal. She had recovered from the 
 shock of their sudden descent and was inclined 
 to look upon the whole adventure joyfully as 
 " experience." In the fitful light from lan 
 terns and blow-torch she looked distractingly 
 pretty, with one of Jerry s scarlet handker 
 chiefs knotted about her throat and a new light 
 of excitement in her eyes. She smiled almost 
 in the old way upon Fleming when he shyly 
 touched her hand as they hunted in the tonneau 
 for the cups and spoons. She declared that 
 her heart failed her when she thought of her 
 father worrying and raging in Rock Springs, 
 but after this dutiful expression of concern 
 she threw herself into the adventure with a full 
 appreciation of the picturesque novelty of the 
 situation. 
 
 Supper was eaten and Sid was at work on 
 the car, when suddenly the doctor sprang to his 
 feet. Far up on the mountain side there had 
 rung out the faint click of horses hoofs, steel 
 shod, against stone. Lightning quick the doc 
 tor threw a blanket over the lantern. For a 
 moment there was silence, and then the sound 
 was repeated, louder this time. 
 
 159
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " Someone s coming down the trail," said the 
 doctor, " and by the sound he s just ridden 
 around that last spur. Just keep your Win 
 chester handy, will you," he added aside to 
 Fleming. 
 
 In the darkness the four stood listening. 
 The sound of ringing hoofs grew louder. 
 
 "He doesn t care how much noise he 
 makes," commented the doctor, " and he s in a 
 hurry. If he don t look out he ll toboggan 
 down the rest of the way into this very pocket, 
 just as we did." 
 
 In another moment the doctor s prophecy 
 was fulfilled. For an instant they saw the 
 horse and its rider outlined against the sky as 
 they made the last turn in the trail, then there 
 came the sound of a wild scrambling plunge 
 down the mountain side. They had barely 
 time to get themselves out of the way before 
 the breakneck rider was in their midst. The 
 doctor s hand had flown to his hip pocket, but 
 he dropped it as he said: 
 
 "Hello, Jacinta!" 
 
 The rider slid from her horse, while the oth 
 ers gathered in astonishment around her. She 
 was breathless and trembling so that she had 
 to lean against her pony to steady herself. 
 
 " You ve got to get out of here quick," she 
 160
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 panted. " Cal Dean and the outfit from Peter- 
 sen s are on your trail. I suspected Miguel 
 I got it out of him when he came back to 
 camp and I lit out as soon as he d gone again. 
 They re after you, Doc, and Miguel s told 
 them Mr. Fleming s an agent for Jim Morse. 
 They re the worst lot from three ranches if 
 Miguel s leading them!" 
 
 The doctor put a steady hand on the girl s 
 shoulder. " Are you sure, Jacinta? " he asked. 
 " How do you know Miguel wasn t trying to 
 scare you? " 
 
 " Because I know Miguel and I saw Cal 
 Dean on the lower trail just at dusk. There 
 were five others with him, and they were 
 headed south." 
 
 " There s no serious danger in Cal Dean un 
 less he s part drunk," said the doctor, reflec 
 tively. 
 
 Jacinta made an impatient gesture. 
 
 "Monday was pay day at Petersen s," she 
 said, " ar A listen- 
 It T.as a long minute before the others 
 heard what her keen ears had detected the 
 far-away sound of horses scrambling cau 
 tiously down a rocky trail. The doctor loos 
 ened his six-shooter. 
 
 " There s no use in the rest of you being 
 161
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 mixed up in this," he said; " I ll go up the trail 
 and meet them." 
 
 " By Jove, you ll do nothing of the kind! " 
 Fleming cried. "You came up into this 
 country to accommodate me it s a pity if I 
 can t do as much for you. I only wish we 
 could get out of this trap of a place " 
 
 The doctor whistled thoughtfully. "We 
 can," he said. "There s a Romeo and Juliet 
 balcony up there that was just built for this 
 kind of a party. Come on." 
 
 162
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 FSN T all this rather melodramatic, 
 Doctor?" Fleming asked, laughingly, 
 
 J as he unloaded from the tonneau his 
 pistols and Winchester. " Surely you can t 
 mean that we re in for a real row, can you? " 
 
 The doctor smiled grimly. He had just 
 driven his horse and Jacinta s deeper into the 
 ravine, and he was now examining his own gun 
 hurriedly. 
 
 " You don t undestand the sheep and cattle 
 question out here, Fleming," he said. " In 
 its way it s as bitter as the race question in the 
 East. And in this case it s an excuse for Cal 
 Dean to organize a shooting party. He hates 
 me and unfortunately he s got pay day on 
 his side. Listen to that ! " 
 
 As if to emphasize his point there came to 
 their ears a faint snatch of ribald song, and 
 then the nearer sound of a horse being urged 
 recklessly over the old trail. 
 
 "Drunk enough to be gay with their guns/* 
 commented the doctor. "Bring what extra 
 drinking water you ve got and a blanket or 
 
 163
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 two, and follow me up the other side of the 
 ravine there." 
 
 Into one-half of this dark cleft in the 
 mountains a glorious moon was pouring its 
 radiance. It illumined the little fortress nature 
 had thrown out high upon the cliff side until 
 its rocky walls were shimmering in a bath of 
 quicksilver. It picked out every stunted tree 
 and boulder on one side of the ravine, but left 
 the other in a purple-black shadow. In this 
 inky blackness the old trail descended, al 
 though there was a point where the pathway 
 turned the spur of the mountain when a rider 
 on the trail stood out for an instant clear 
 against the night sky. Past this point Flem 
 ing and the doctor watched six men ride, to 
 be swallowed up in the darkness of the de 
 scending trail. 
 
 " Cal Dean and five others," said the doc 
 tor. " And one of em Miguel. They ve reck 
 oned on our being down there at the bottom," 
 he added; "and I guess they re some disap 
 pointed to find we ve vamoosed. Nice, snug 
 little shelf we ve got up here, anyway " 
 
 "But the car s down there!" observed 
 Fleming. " I wish I could have got it under 
 cover." 
 
 The doctor crouched, peering keenly be- 
 164
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 tween two convenient rocks. Suddenly his 
 arm went up and the crack of a six-shooter 
 rang out. There was the immediate sound of 
 a retreat up the trail. 
 
 " I thought so," he said. " They were get 
 ting ready to play funny with the car. You ll 
 have to keep your eyes on it, Fleming or it 
 will be us for town on foot, if they can get a 
 match to it." 
 
 And then he added sharply, to Betty, who 
 had half started to her feet when the shot 
 rang out : " Don t stand up, any of you. They 
 know where we are now, and this moonlight 
 puts us right in the limelight. Just lie low and 
 let them open the ball." 
 
 A silence, tense with expectation, fell over 
 the canyon; then a voice seemed to leap out 
 at them from the old trail : 
 
 We don t see your cayuse, Doc Chanler, 
 but we know you re there. We want a little 
 conversation with you and it ll be better for all 
 concerned if you jest step out an give it to 
 us. We ll wait five minutes, and if you don t 
 climb down on the tick, we re goin to shoot 
 up this hole in the wall." 
 
 Dead silence for a moment. Then the doc 
 tor half arose, a troubled frown on his face. 
 
 " I don t like it on account of the women," 
 
 165
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 he muttered to Fleming. "Mebbe I d better 
 go down and have it out with em " 
 
 But before he could finish Betty put her 
 hand on Fleming s arm. 
 
 " I m not afraid, Jerry," she said steadily. 
 You won t let him go down there, will you? " 
 
 "Of course not," said Jerry cheerfully. 
 " Consider yourself appointed captain of the 
 beleaguered forces, Doctor! And go light if 
 it comes to gun play," he added in an under 
 tone, " for we ve only got a few rounds to our 
 
 names." 
 
 The doctor s reply was cut short by a voice 
 from the dark announcing the end of the five 
 minutes. 
 
 "I guess I won t come down, Cal," called 
 the doctor in his calm drawl. "But I advise 
 you to think twice before you get funny w r ith 
 your guns. The law don t like fellows that 
 shoot up tourists any more than it does sheep 
 killers." 
 
 A string of profanity followed this ulti 
 matum. There was a short consultation on the 
 other side of the ravine. Then suddenly the 
 night became hideous with a wild yelling and 
 shooting. Half a dozen bullets whistled over 
 their heads. 
 
 " Sit still," commanded the doctor. " It s 
 166
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 a regular cowpunchers bluff. Save your am 
 munition till they charge us." 
 
 "Till they charge us!" Betty heard the 
 command and shivered with terror. She drew 
 a little nearer to Jacinta, who sat stoically 
 clasping her knees, only her black eyes show 
 ing her excitement. The two knelt behind a 
 pile of broken rock which lay at the back of 
 their natural fortress. High above them the 
 cliff towered. By throwing back her head 
 Betty could see the stars through a fringe of 
 brush at the edge of the ravine. Everything 
 was unreal a dream from which she would 
 presently awake with a start of fright. By 
 rising on her knees she could see the car, its 
 brasswork shining in the silvery moonlight at 
 the bottom of the ravine. She wondered if 
 any of them would ever ride in it again and 
 then, swiftly, several things happened at once. 
 There was the noise of horses scrambling down 
 the trail opposite; figures hurled themselves 
 through the moonlight at the bottom of the 
 ravine, and Jacinta sprang to her feet with a 
 scream of warning. 
 
 For the little Spaniard, her quick ears catch 
 ing the tiny sound of a pebble dislodged at 
 her back, had turned and looked straight into 
 the face of Cal Dean ! He was about to draw 
 
 167
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 himself up from his last foothold, one of a se 
 ries of ledges which the doctor had overlooked, 
 and which gave to an active man an excellent 
 opportunity to step into their stronghold by the 
 back door. He thrust her aside and leveled his 
 gun at the doctor, who had rushed toward them 
 at Jacinta s first cry. Betty saw the doctor 
 stoop and make a lightning rush at his assail 
 ant. For an instant she shut her eyes and then 
 she heard Fleming call to Sid for help. 
 
 Up the steep path from the ravine below 
 the remaining members of Cal Dean s party 
 had made a quick rush. Sid, momentarily con 
 fused by the attack on both sides of them, 
 hesitated, waving his revolver wildly ; Fleming, 
 in no condition to do battle, would alone have 
 met the invasion from that quarter had not 
 Jacinta sprung to his relief. 
 
 She was as quick and as fearless as some 
 enraged wild thing; she emptied her Colt s 
 automatic down the path in a way that effec 
 tively gave pause to the four who still remained 
 there. One had already gained the level of 
 their defenses, and had thrown himself upon 
 Jerry. Betty saw them swaying dangerously 
 near the edge of the cliff. Something primi 
 tive and fiercely unafraid awoke in her. She 
 darted across the open space, stooping swiftly 
 
 168
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 once as she ran, and the next instant Jerry s 
 man staggered back with a howl of pain for 
 Betty had hit him squarely between the shoul 
 ders with a most effective fragment of red 
 sandstone. She heard Jerry cry : 
 
 "Go back, Betty go back!" but she 
 stooped for another rocky missile. Then just 
 over her head there blazed out a deafening 
 roar. She saw a man stagger backwards down 
 the path; a second and a third shot followed 
 and Jerry fell at her feet. 
 
 Of the moment that ensued Betty never 
 could remember anything clearly except the 
 pallor of Jerry s face as she bent over him. 
 More shots whistled overhead; she heard the 
 scrambling retreat of the besieging party down 
 the cliff side and she saw Jacinta snatch up 
 Fleming s revolver as it fell from his hand. 
 The doctor came running, his smoking six- 
 shooter in his hand, and Betty wondered 
 vaguely why such a good-humored man should 
 swear like a pirate. Then all sounds grew 
 faint and far away, the night darkened, and 
 Betty, having acquitted herself extremely 
 well for two minutes, quietly fainted away. 
 
 A few minutes later she opened her eyes to 
 Jerry s face, very near her own and haggard 
 with anxiety. 
 
 169
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "You you re not dead?" she whispered. 
 
 Jerry laughed and pointed to the bandage 
 about his head. " Only scratched my scalp," 
 he assured her. ; Would you have have 
 cared, Betty? " 
 
 In the darkness he was very close to her, his 
 face wistfully white above her. Deep in her 
 heart of hearts she knew she would have 
 " cared " immeasurably; but the time was not 
 come when she could believe in him wholly. 
 She freed herself from his supporting arm. 
 
 "Of course I should have cared, Jerry 
 terribly," she said with a laugh that shook a 
 little in spite of herself. "What is going to 
 happen to us next? Have we driven them 
 away, do you think?" 
 
 Jerry did not answer for a moment. He 
 folded a blanket to make her more comfort 
 able, and he made light of their position; but 
 he took pains that he and the doctor should 
 be out of earshot when they talked over their 
 next move. Cal Dean and at least one of his 
 party were disabled that much satisfaction 
 remained to them from the encounter, but be 
 tween Fleming, the doctor and Sid there re 
 mained only a half dozen rounds of ammuni 
 tion. 
 
 " They may not charge us again," said the 
 170
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 doctor, "but I m inclined to think they will. 
 They re in an ugly temper, that s plain; and 
 the little damage we ve done them has only 
 made them worse. I wish I had made a better 
 job of Cal Dean," he added grimly. " I only 
 had a chance to wing him. Well, we can wait 
 and that s all we can do." 
 
 An hour passed on leaden wings. The 
 moonlight shifted till their stronghold was in 
 darkness and the old trail opposite was il 
 lumined. The car was being slowly engulfed 
 in the creeping shadows of the ravine. There 
 was no sign of their assailants, but their horses 
 still stood below the trail. 
 
 They re going to wait till the moon goes 
 down," said the doctor. And in the darkness 
 Fleming instinctively put his hand over Bet 
 ty s. 
 
 " Poor little girl," he whispered. " I d give 
 anything if you were out of this!" 
 
 Betty s hand responded faintly to his clasp. 
 
 You needn t worry about me, Jerry or feel 
 
 sorry for me. I m learning some things," and 
 
 she smiled at him with an expression her face 
 
 had never worn for him before. 
 
 There remained only a broad bar of moon 
 light at the mouth of the ravine. In ten min 
 utes darkness complete and enshrouding would 
 
 171
 
 be upon them. Fleming had turned to speak 
 to the doctor, when he heard an exclamation 
 from Jacinta. The next instant below them a 
 tiny spark of light flashed out near the dark 
 bulk of the car; there was the crack of a pis 
 tol in Jacinta s hands ; a shrill yell pierced the 
 air, and then the whole ravine was alight from 
 a slender column of flame that leaped upward 
 at the side of the car. 
 
 With the doctor s warning in his ears Flem 
 ing plunged downwards toward the blaze. He 
 was oblivious to everything except the fact that 
 his car was in danger. He was seized with a 
 mad frenzy that gave him for the moment a 
 strength and coolness not his own. A shadowy 
 figure rose in his path and went down before 
 the savage blow he aimed at it. A second 
 loomed in the darkness and he used one of the 
 two cartridges he had left in his gun without 
 effect apparently, for the fellow blazed at him 
 as he ran. Close behind him came Sid and the 
 doctor. He heard the crack of their pistols 
 twice before he reached the Mountaineer. 
 
 The right side of the car was not a foot from 
 the leaping column of flame; Fleming saw at 
 once that one of their gasolene cans from the 
 running board on that side had been emptied 
 on the ground and fired. If they saved the 
 
 172
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 car they must push it away from that growing 
 flame ; and they must risk being shot from am 
 bush while they were doing it. But in that 
 instant for Jerry Fleming there was no pos 
 sible choice. 
 
 The car had got to be saved. 
 
 With a yell to Sid and the doctor he ran to 
 the back of the car. One tremendous effort 
 and the Mountaineer moved half its length. It 
 was clear of the flame, and two feet more would 
 have made it quite safe in that windless night, 
 when a shot rang out from the farther end of 
 the ravine and the doctor dropped to the 
 ground. 
 
 They ve got me, boys," he gasped. " You 
 make for cover. . . ." 
 
 " Not without you," said Fleming; and they 
 hurriedly dragged him to shelter behind the 
 car. 
 
 The Mountaineer stood with its length across 
 the ravine. Thus it afforded protection of a 
 sort, and gave them time to take breath. Under 
 the doctor s direction they slit his coat sleeve 
 and bound up the wound, which he called a 
 mere furrow, to be regarded as a matter of 
 course. Twice Fleming and Sid dashed out 
 to throw sand upon a tongue of flame that 
 crept toward the car, each time drawing down 
 
 173
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 upon themselves a scattering volley from the 
 dark. 
 
 "The cowardly skunks!" groaned the doc 
 tor. " Save your one round, for they ll rush us, 
 now, I guess." 
 
 He was right. At the end of a five-minute 
 wait that seemed a nerve-racked hour, Cal 
 Dean made his last onslaught. It was like him 
 a display of savage bravado. There were 
 four of them, and they made their charge 
 mounted, yelling and shooting as they rushed 
 down the ravine. Fleming took cool aim over 
 the tonneau seat. For Betty s sake he must 
 make his last shot do its work. As the fore 
 most rider came into the radius of light, Flem 
 ing fired. He saw the man sway in the saddle, 
 and then high over the infernal din there came 
 the crisp crack of Winchesters from the old 
 trail. 
 
 The doctor pulled him down to the ground. 
 " Listen ! " he cried, and his voice was shrill in 
 Fleming s ear. ; That s a Winchester look 
 there look up the trail ! That s Myrick My- 
 rick and the boys, thank God ! " 
 
 174
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 A his hotel in Rock Springs Betty s 
 father was eating a distracted break 
 fast. This was Friday morning. 
 Since Tuesday afternoon, as he himself de 
 clared, he had lost in weight and grown ten 
 years older. For the hotel employees life had 
 also been difficult since Hiram D. Albright 
 arrived. Betty s wire had caught him before 
 he had left the train at Rock Springs and re 
 lieved his first agony of fear for her safety. 
 Fortunately his uncertainty had been brief, for 
 he had not awakened from his nap until the 
 train was pulling into the town, and before he 
 had fully realized that Betty was not on board 
 they were pushing her telegram into his hands. 
 But the reaction from that one moment of 
 fright was fraught with uncomfortable conse 
 quences for everyone around him. He pes 
 tered the hotel people with questions about the 
 locality of Myrick s sheep camp until they fled 
 when they saw him coming; on Wednesday, 
 when Betty did not appear, they were obliged 
 to wrest him away from a fixed determination 
 to go forth and hunt for her. They explained 
 
 175
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 to him that the sheep camp was a long day s 
 journey from Rock Springs, and that he did 
 not seem exactly in training for a sixty-mile 
 jaunt on horseback. He gave up his project 
 for that day; but on Thursday uncertainty 
 and anxiety had reduced him to a fearful state 
 of temper. As his anxiety for Betty deepened 
 his ire against the cause of it all increased. 
 Poor Jerry had never before occupied so low 
 a place in the estimate of the man he would 
 fain have called father-in-law. 
 
 One reflection gave the old gentleman a 
 gleam of satisfaction. His car and his man 
 would win the race. Vannuccini should be, as 
 nearly as Mr. Albright could figure it, three- 
 quarters of the way across Idaho. His ha 
 rassed countenance relaxed to a grim smile 
 whenever this thought occurred to him. On 
 this Friday morning at breakfast he found it 
 necessary to stimulate his spirits at frequent 
 intervals with the picture of Jerry s deserved 
 defeat, for no word had come of Betty. Be 
 fore he had finished the cheerless meal, he had 
 finally made up his mind to send out an emis 
 sary to recover and fetch back his wayward 
 daughter. 
 
 As he stepped outside the door of his hotel 
 he heard the honk, honk, of a familiar horn. 
 
 176
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 He turned toward the sound with an incredu 
 lous start, and the next instant Betty was in 
 his arms, hugging him wildly, overflowing with 
 explanations, laughing, begging him not to 
 scold her and making it temporarily impossible 
 for him to utter a word. 
 
 You dear old dad!" she cried, encircling 
 his neck in a strangling embrace, " I know 
 you ve got a lot of horrid things bottled up to 
 say to us, but don t do it ! Just think how glad 
 you are to see me again all safe and sound, 
 and and here s Jerry, dad; he s done the 
 greatest stunts with his car now, shake hands 
 with Jerry, there s a dear ! " 
 
 But the name and sight of Jerry liberated all 
 his indignation. He sternly removed his daugh 
 ter s arm from around his neck and bade them 
 follow him inside. 
 
 It was a memorable half hour that ensued. 
 Even the intrepid Betty was impressed by her 
 father s wrath. She gave up trying to defend 
 her own carelessness in getting left behind, and 
 tried to make her father see that she had been 
 moved by the highest humanitarian motives 
 when she went to the succor of Jerry. 
 
 " Why, his shoulder was dislocated, father! " 
 she protested. " And when I found out he was 
 
 hurt up in that sheep camp " 
 
 177
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " What was he doing in a sheep camp forty 
 miles or more off his route? " her father inter 
 rupted. " What were you doing, sir? " he 
 barked at Jerry, his keen eyes under their 
 shaggy brows beginning to gleam ominously. 
 Jerry opened his lips to reply, but a sudden, 
 desperate eloquence seemed to have seized 
 Betty. Her face grew very rosy ; she plucked 
 her father insistently by the lapel of his coat. 
 
 " He was crossing the Divide," she rushed 
 in. "And there was a Mexican by the name 
 of Miguel who guided us wrong and we had a 
 midnight fight with desperadoes and we killed 
 Miguel- 
 
 Her father threw up his hands. " You killed 
 a Mexican by the name of " 
 
 " Well, somebody did," Betty went on. " We 
 think it was Jacinta s shot that finished him, 
 but it doesn t matter who did it. It s done. 
 He was a villain, and he betrayed us and tried 
 to fire the car, and if My rick and the other 
 sheepmen hadn t come when they did maybe 
 I wouldn t be here talking to you now. The 
 doctor said " 
 
 Her father sat down suddenly upon a con 
 venient chair. " Betty," he said hoarsely, " will 
 you begin at the beginning and let me have it 
 slowly?" 
 
 178
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 It was exactly what Betty wanted. With 
 all the dramatic power at her command she 
 related the story of their night s adventure, 
 from the time they had left the sheep camp to 
 their rescue by Myrick and two other sheep 
 men. She told of their finding the unfortu 
 nate Miguel shot dead beside the car he had at 
 tempted to fire and of the escape of Cal Dean 
 and his followers in the darkness. They had 
 made a splendid sweep up the trail at the first 
 shot and got away in the confusion. 
 
 " They were regular brigands, dad ; but you 
 couldn t help a sneaking admiration for the 
 way they could ride. Why, I was so scared 
 that I was almost dead, but when daylight 
 came and I saw the trail they had ridden over, 
 on the run, you know I couldn t help being 
 glad it wasn t one of them who w r as lying down 
 there covered with a linen duster. Of course, 
 it was awful to think we had caused the death 
 of a man, but out here, someway, things look 
 different. People fight if they have to, and 
 when they get into the kind of a corner we 
 were in last night- 
 She stopped at the sight of her father s gray 
 face from which he wiped the perspiration with 
 a trembling hand. You might have been 
 killed!" he said hoarsely. 
 
 179
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 She was on her knees beside him in an in 
 stant, with a contrite arm around his shoulders. 
 " I was in no danger," she assured him, " I was 
 hiding behind a big rock most of the time with 
 Jacinta." 
 
 " Jacinta who s she?" 
 
 Betty colored. " She she s the girl that 
 
 Jerry that " she stopped for the simple 
 
 reason that she did not know what to say next. 
 
 Betty s father looked keenly from one to the 
 other. "Well, well? " he inquired sharply. 
 
 "Why," said Jerry, very simply, because un 
 aware of complications, " she s the girl I met 
 near Black Rock Butte, Monday afternoon. 
 She was running away from this same Miguel 
 didn t want to marry him, you know and 
 she d lost her horse. Of course I had to take 
 her to Myricks." 
 
 Mr. Albright sniffed contemptuously. " You 
 virtually threw up the race and went forty 
 miles out of your way for a girl? " 
 
 Jerry colored, but he stood his ground. "It 
 was the only thing I could do, sir. I wouldn t 
 leave a dog in that burnt-up desert country. 
 I had to take her to her friends." 
 
 " Couldn t have brought her on to the near 
 est town, I suppose? " Hiram D. Albright s 
 tone was sarcastically polite. 
 
 180
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " Not very well, sir." Jerry smiled as he 
 remembered Jacinta s air of unshakable deter 
 mination. 
 
 Betty s father misinterpreted the smile. His 
 temper rose. "Well, you ve lost your race, 
 sir, and as far as I can see you ve got a mighty 
 poor excuse. Betty, you go to bed; you look 
 petered out." 
 
 Betty was indeed pale with weariness; her 
 pretty hair was disheveled, and there was an 
 unbecoming smudge on her nose. But in Jer 
 ry s eyes she was perfect, for she turned to 
 him with a radiant smile and said : 
 
 "You did perfectly right, Jerry, whether 
 you ve lost the race or not. Here s my hand 
 and I wish you luck." 
 
 She was gone before, in his grateful aston 
 ishment, he could reply, and he did not linger 
 in the grim presence of Betty s father. There 
 was much work to be done on the car; Cal 
 Dean s attack on them and the unfortunate 
 end of Miguel had to be reported to the author 
 ities, and he must locate by telegraph, if pos 
 sible, the whereabouts of Vannuccini. 
 
 This last he found a fruitless task. Vannuc 
 cini had evidently disappeared somewhere be 
 yond the borders of Idaho, possibly off the line 
 of the telegraph, and an hour s search failed 
 
 181
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 to locate him. With a heavy heart Jerry went 
 back to the hotel for a brief rest. 
 
 " I m afraid the game s up," he said to Sid, 
 "but we ll go on it s the only thing we can 
 do." 
 
 Why, sure!" rejoined Sid, cheerfully. 
 " Never say die!" 
 
 A bath and a sleep restored Fleming s spir 
 its somewhat. He lingered outside the dining- 
 room a while in the hope that Betty would ap 
 pear and join him at dinner, but he was half 
 way through that meal when she came in with 
 her father, a new Betty, daintily rejuvenated 
 by the magic of a fresh toilette. She led the 
 way to the table where he sat, and his heart per 
 formed the feat of leaping upward when she 
 took the chair next to his. 
 
 For a subtle change had come over Betty. 
 She was not the Betty who had found him 
 merely amusing, or the coldly disapproving 
 Betty of the last few days. She looked at 
 him a little shyly, but with a sweet friendliness 
 that made him most foolishly happy. With a 
 simple masculine faith he accepted her changed 
 attitude unquestioningly ; he did not know 
 whether he was eating ambrosia or a very du 
 bious entree. 
 
 Betty seemed bent on making that meal a 
 
 182
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 pleasant one ; she did not mention Vannuccini, 
 and Fleming 1 himself had almost forgotten the 
 shadow of defeat when his ears caught a frag 
 ment of the conversation at the next table. 
 Sid Johnston had come in some time before 
 and taken a seat at a table just back of them. 
 He had apparently made friends, after his 
 usual custom, with his fellow diners, and was 
 cheerfully extracting from them everything 
 they knew or declared they knew about the 
 roads in Sweetwater County. There was one 
 loquacious individual out of whose mouth wis 
 dom and knowledge had been rolling for some 
 minutes when he uttered the sentence that 
 arrested Jerry s attention. 
 
 "You want ter look out fer that old trail 
 near Granger. If I ve said it once I ve said 
 it a hundred times that somebody would take 
 a header some day off that trail into the gravel 
 pit. I says I told you so ! to the section boss 
 th other day when that big red automobile took 
 a flyer into the pit, and I says to him that the 
 railroad had ought to " 
 
 He got no further, for Jerry and Sid de 
 manded simultaneously to know what automo 
 bile and what pit he was talking about. He 
 looked amazed at the interest he had aroused, 
 and, flattered by the fact that the pretty girl 
 
 183
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 at the next table was also excitedly listening, 
 he told in great detail a story that put new life 
 into Jerry and Sid and sent the color to Betty s 
 cheeks. 
 
 Divested of its ornamentation the tale was to 
 the effect that an Italian in a big red touring 
 car had attempted to make Granger late Mon 
 day night and in the dark had plunged forty 
 feet into a gravel pit. The narrator drew with 
 the point of his knife on the table-cloth a map 
 of the two trails into Granger. One of them 
 pursued a roundabout way into the town, and 
 the other, long since abandoned, had at one time 
 reached Granger by a short cut. The railroad, 
 after the easy manner of the vicinity, had inter 
 rupted this old trail by digging a gravel pit 
 across it ; had run a siding to the spot and then 
 had neglected to put up a single warning to 
 the wayfarer. Vannuccini, evidently lured on 
 by the lights of the town just ahead, and run 
 ning at high speed, had plunged into this pit 
 and landed beside a box car full of Japanese 
 section hands. 
 
 It was not the miracle of the escape unhurt 
 of the two men in the car that interested that 
 loquacious individual so much as the effect of 
 the accident upon the Japanese section hands. 
 When the car came crashing down upon their 
 
 184
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 sleeping place they at first thought it was an 
 earthquake, and Pete Rankin, the section boss, 
 said he had never heard such an uproar of 
 heathen tongues in his life. Then, when the 
 Japs discovered the red car and its badly 
 bruised occupants, they were near to mobbing 
 the unfortunate Italian for what they consid 
 ered a diabolical attempt on their lives. 
 
 "But the car was it smashed up much?" 
 interrupted Sid eagerly. 
 
 Well, I ain t up on automobiles," admitted 
 the narrator, " but I seen it when it was loaded 
 on a car for Diamondville an it looked to me 
 like a pretty fair imitation of a wreck. They 
 sent it to Diamondville because th s a big ma 
 chine shop there," he added in answer to a 
 question from Mr. Albright, who had joined 
 the group. 
 
 Without ceremony Sid Johnston bolted for 
 the door, the light of battle gleaming in his 
 eyes; and with one look at Betty, Fleming fol 
 lowed. 
 
 Betty went slowly up to her room. She 
 stood at the window a few minutes, her smooth 
 brow wrinkled thoughtfully; then with a quite 
 unreasonable blush she pinned on her hat and 
 ran down to the street. As she left the hotel 
 she glanced about guiltily for her father, but 
 
 185
 
 he was still in the dining-room. She walked 
 determinedly down the street until she came to 
 the blacksmith shop, in front of which stood 
 the Mountaineer. Sid Johnston was pumping 
 up the rear tires and Jerry was testing a new 
 set of dry cells with his ammeter. 
 
 He looked up surprised as she stopped be 
 side him. "Would you like some more adven 
 tures, Betty? " he laughed. 
 
 " I want to ask you something, Jerry," she 
 said. " Will you walk down the street a little 
 way with me?" 
 
 When they had turned into a quiet little 
 side street she said, unexpectedly: "Jerry, 
 how did Mr. Vannuccini know about Jacinta? " 
 
 " He saw her first! " Jerry laughed ruefully. 
 " Met her on the western edge of the Red Des 
 ert and left her for me to pick up. Pleasant, 
 subtle beggar that Vannuccini." 
 
 "Too subtle! " said Betty scornfully. 
 
 Jerry laughed as if nothing could depress 
 him now. " Never mind, Betty didn t he run 
 into a gravel pit? Sort of poetic justice, you 
 know. I don t believe he s more than got away 
 from Diamondville now; I ll beat him yet, 
 you ll see, Betty." 
 
 Betty s eyes kindled. " You must beat him, 
 Jerry. I shall feel I can t tell you how I shall 
 
 186
 
 feel if you don t. You ve got to beat him 
 now; it s the only way left us to convince 
 father- 
 She stopped in swift confusion ; the " us " 
 was too significant. There were two small 
 boys eying them from a doorway; they stared 
 solemnly round-eyed at the spectacle of a 
 strange, pretty young lady hastily withdraw 
 ing her hand from the enthusiastic clasp of an 
 athletic young man in a corduroy coat. The 
 strange young lady was rosily remonstrating 
 with the athletic young man for his indiscreet 
 public demonstration. In order to distract at 
 tention from her own rosiness she was also 
 talking very fast. 
 
 "Of course, you can see for yourself father 
 is dreadfully prejudiced now. He s got to 
 blame somebody for his two days anxiety 
 about me, and besides he declares you ve whif 
 fled about in a most unnecessary manner and 
 probably lost the race, and in short he can t see 
 any good in you ! There s no use arguing with 
 dad it only makes him stick to his opinion 
 harder. The only way to convince him is to 
 show him. I just wish he d been with us yes 
 terday. He w r ould have realized that automo- 
 biling out here is no easy thing. I almost wish 
 you could take dad right out into the canyons 
 
 187
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and sage brush and mountain passes and things 
 long enough to to scare him! Oh, I know 
 that sounds bad, but you know what I mean. 
 Dad thinks it s just a matter of sticking to the 
 wheel and whizzing right along. Well, don t 
 you see, what he needs is to be put in your 
 place for a few days. I m afraid father," she 
 added with an anxious wrinkle of her brows, 
 "is rather spoilt just telling people to do 
 things and having them done without his know 
 ing how they re done." 
 
 Jerry stopped to look under the broad brim 
 of Betty s hat. " Shall I kidnap him, Betty? 
 I could give your father a taste of the road 
 that would open his eyes; if you ll help me I ll 
 kidnap you both ! " 
 
 Betty stopped short and clasped her hands 
 excitedly. "Oh, Jerry, will you? It would 
 be the very thing! I d love to be kidnaped, 
 and father he wouldn t like it at all, but it 
 would be good for him! Could you do it? 
 Would we be very much in your way? " 
 
 Jerry s expression hinted that Betty could 
 never be in the way. He declared they could 
 make room in the tonneau by shipping part of 
 their supplies ahead. " But there isn t a min 
 ute to be lost," he added with a glance at his 
 watch. " I ll be at the hotel with the car in
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 twenty minutes. If you can persuade your 
 father to get in for a short ride the trick is 
 done. Once get him in the car and we can 
 make it as long a ride as you say." 
 
 Betty laughed delightedly. "I ll do it I 
 think I can manage him. I ll hurry back to the 
 hotel and pack our bags and in twenty minutes 
 I ll produce the victim." 
 
 Once aboard the lugger and the girl is 
 mine, " Jerry quoted, and the street resounded 
 with their laughter. 
 
 Sid Johnston did not altogether approve of 
 this new handicap, but he had a secret sym 
 pathy with the conspirators which kept him 
 from more than a perfunctory grumble. And 
 to Jerry s real surprise Betty produced her 
 father. He let it be known as he took his seat 
 in the tonne au that as a concession to Betty he 
 would lend his presence to the race as far as 
 Granger. He looked grimly resistant, how 
 ever, and indisposed to lend himself to the 
 game in any way. He was also pessimistically 
 certain the landlord would forget to send their 
 luggage on to Granger that afternoon. Betty 
 returned to make sure of their bags, and Jerry 
 followed her inside. 
 
 " Betty," he said, " are you game?" 
 
 " Depends on what you mean, Jerry." 
 189
 
 "Well, see here," he went on hurriedly. 
 " Keep out a small bag for yourself, put in a 
 few things, and send everything else on to 
 Pocatello!" 
 
 Betty gasped "But that s in Idaho!" 
 Well, I asked if you were game!" Jerry 
 grinned joyfully. " I ve put in an extra pair 
 of army blankets," he added mysteriously. 
 
 A gleam came into Betty s eyes. "Don t 
 stand there grinning," she said. " Help me 
 to put new labels on these things. How do 
 you spell Pocatello, anyway?" 
 
 190
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE forty-mile ride from Rock Springs 
 to Granger proved disappointingly 
 uneventful. Nothing happened that 
 could show off an aspiring motorist s in 
 trepidity or skill; the trail was fairly good ex 
 cept for the tough sage brush; there were no 
 thrilling grades, no dangerous mountain 
 passes, nothing as it should have been accord 
 ing to the rules of picturesque romance. It 
 was very tame. Betty s father conveyed the 
 impression, as the calm afternoon wore on, that 
 the difficulties of the transcontinental run had 
 in his opinion been highly overrated. He 
 sniffed scornfully a great many times and then 
 went uncomfortably to sleep. 
 
 Betty, who was sitting in front with Jerry, 
 leaned toward him and whispered despairingly : 
 " I think you might have made something hap 
 pen, Jerry!" 
 
 " But I couldn t do anything that might put 
 us back, Betty," he returned unhappily. " He d 
 see through any little parlor trick I might per 
 form, anyway. I ve got to overtake Vannuc- 
 cini. I must make the best time I can." 
 
 191
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Yes, yes! " she agreed entirely. " But see, 
 there are the lights of Granger. I don t be 
 lieve I can ever persuade him to go on with 
 the car to-morrow." 
 
 A grin and a look of inspiration began to 
 overspread Jerry s face. The trail runs at 
 some distance from the three saloons, hotel and 
 water tank that make up Granger, and the 
 traveler who would pay it a visit must branch 
 off at a certain point, cross the railroad tracks 
 and ford the river into town. When they 
 reached this point Jerry increased his speed un 
 til they were leaving the few scattered lights 
 of the place behind them at a reckless pace. 
 Sid leaned forward from the tonneau and re 
 minded Fleming that he was missing Granger. 
 
 " Keep it to yourself!" he was commanded, 
 and Betty gasped. 
 
 " Aren t we going to stop? " she whispered. 
 
 "Not unless you say so," Fleming replied 
 with a chuckle. 
 
 Betty did not say so. She looked around 
 nervously at her father, but he was asleep, with 
 his head bobbing dreadfully against the ton 
 neau back. 
 
 "Poor father!" she breathed; but she did 
 not command Fleming to take them back to a 
 comfortable hotel. And in five minutes there 
 
 192
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 was no sign of Granger; behind them was 
 nothing, and ahead of them through a velvety 
 starlit darkness the trail led away, into the un 
 known. In the distance the mountains loomed ; 
 all around them fell the mysterious stillness 
 of the plains. 
 
 Betty stretched out her arms with a long 
 breath of delight. 
 
 "I never dreamed of stars like these!" she 
 whispered. " If I ve got any gypsy blood I 
 think it is stirring now. Look, the earth has 
 melted away, there s only that little patch of 
 trail under our searchlight and we re flying 
 through immeasurable space! I d like to go 
 on like this forever my gracious! father s 
 waking up ! " 
 
 Father was indeed waking up. He de 
 manded to know if they were ever going to get 
 to Granger. His tone was undisguisedly cross, 
 and as Jerry leaned over the steering wheel he 
 heard Betty give a nervous little giggle. 
 You break it to him, Betty," he begged. 
 
 " It s your party! " she returned. 
 
 "Should have made Granger before dark!" 
 came from the tonneau behind them. 
 
 " How shall I begin? " whispered Jerry des 
 perately. 
 
 "Tell him oh, I don t know what!" the 
 H93
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 other conspirator replied, as she choked back 
 a second giggle. Jerry thought hard and rap 
 idly for two minutes. Then he stopped the 
 car and turned toward the voice that continued 
 to come crossly out of the dark. 
 
 ; We ve gone past Granger, sir," he said. 
 
 It is more charitable to sketch with a sparing 
 hand the manner in which Betty s father re 
 ceived this announcement. Futile rage is never 
 dignified, and in this case the wrath of Hiram 
 D. Albright was, probably for the first time in 
 many prosperous years, as impotent as a damp 
 sky-rocket. He could not get over or around 
 the fact that his expressed wish had been dis 
 regarded, that he sat helplessly stranded in to 
 tal darkness, on an unknown trail, miles from 
 anywhere. He was very nearly incoherent with 
 wrath, but they understood him to be demand 
 ing explanations of this incredible and astound 
 ing contempt of his plans. 
 
 "My schedule did not include a stop at 
 Granger, Mr. Albright," said Jerry respect- 
 fully. 
 
 Mr. Albright gasped, and demanded forci 
 bly to know what kind of idiotic foolishness 
 this was. "You knew I wanted to stop at 
 Granger wasn t that enough?" he roared. 
 
 " I am racing, Mr. Albright. I m sorry if 
 194
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 you are inconvenienced, but when you accepted 
 a seat in my car you accepted racing conditions. 
 It is absolutely necessary that I make the best 
 time possible will you excuse me if we go on? 
 We re losing valuable time." 
 
 And he threw in the clutch without more 
 ado. From sheer amazement Betty s father 
 subsided. Several miles slipped by them. The 
 country was becoming more mountainous ; the 
 hills began to loom out of the darkness; more 
 and more frequently they were obliged to 
 dodge the giant sage brush; the rough trail, 
 merely two-wheel ruts under their searchlight, 
 twisted up hill and down, like an ant ingen 
 iously seeking the line of least resistance. 
 
 When they paused at last with their front 
 wheels hanging carelessly over the bank of a 
 small stream, Betty s father found his tongue. 
 
 " It s criminal recklessness!" he cried," rush 
 ing through country like this after dark! I 
 suppose we ll have to stop here for the rest of 
 the night?" 
 
 "Oh, no," returned Jerry gaily, "not at all! 
 we ll just ford this brook and go on." 
 
 Mr. Albright stood up and eyed the brook. 
 To his imagination it seemed fearfully dark 
 and swift. His heart quailed before its un 
 known depths. 
 
 195
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " Betty," he commanded, " you get right out. 
 I m not going to have our lives risked by this 
 foolhardy- 
 
 "Now, father," Betty interrupted sternly, 
 " you sit down. Jerry has been doing this kind 
 of thing for three thousand miles. Why, this 
 is nothing to what he has done. Jerry, don t 
 mind us. Just go ahead as if we weren t 
 here." 
 
 Jerry and Sid, who had been turning the 
 searchlight on the stream, climbed back to their 
 seats and a minute later they were plowing 
 through the water. Compared to some of the 
 fords they had encountered this was a small 
 affair, but it had its due effect on the unaccus 
 tomed mind of Betty s father. As they de 
 scended deeper into the water he clutched the 
 back of the next seat as if fully prepared to 
 swim for life any moment, and when with a 
 last swish they climbed the opposite bank he 
 sank back limply. 
 
 "Do you know," he asked Sid, whom hith 
 erto he had ignored, " how long he will keep 
 this up?" 
 
 " Oh, we may run all night unless the trail 
 gets too bad," Sid returned, easily. " We have 
 frequently lost the trail on a night like this and 
 wandered around till morning looking for it. 
 
 196
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Of course, it s never a dead sure thing that we 
 won t go over a precipice when we get into 
 the mountains ; but you have to take your risks, 
 you know, in a contest of this kind. This is a 
 cinch, just now, compared to what it may be 
 later. Why, back in the eastern part of the 
 State we crossed a thirty- foot-deep gulch on 
 two railroad ties and the same night we came 
 within six inches of taking a header into the 
 
 Laramie River " 
 
 Young man, you talk too much ! " the old 
 gentleman interrupted him. He was silent for 
 a few nervous minutes while Jerry guided the 
 car around the shoulder of a barren, rocky hill 
 toward which they had been climbing for the 
 past fifteen minutes. On the narrow trail with 
 the cliff towering above them on their right 
 and the ominous empty blackness at their left 
 they seemed to hang between earth and sky. 
 As they dipped into the shadows of the descend 
 ing trail Betty gave a cry of alarm and her 
 father started nervously from his seat, for di 
 rectly in their path loomed up a shadowy some 
 thing which resembled an elephant in the ex 
 citing instant when they all wondered if the 
 brakes would stop them before they ran into it. 
 When they found it to be a big boulder from 
 the hill above they had to face the necessity of 
 
 197
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 clearing it from the path. Sid and Jerry had 
 only three arms between them, the dislocated 
 shoulder being still troublesome, and a hint was 
 conveyed to Mr. Albright that his help would 
 be appreciated. He responded readily enough 
 and they fell to work. It seemed a simple busi 
 ness to roll the boulder down the hillside, but 
 in reality it took an hour s hard work to pry 
 the rock from its position and get it to a point 
 where a united push would send it down the 
 canyon below. 
 
 But in that strenuous hour Betty s father 
 seemed to have worked off some of his bad 
 temper. He rubbed his hands with satisfaction 
 as he listened to the crashing descent of the 
 boulder. 
 
 "There! That s a good job done," he re 
 marked, and Betty called out tactfully: 
 
 "What would we have done without you, 
 Dad?" 
 
 At eleven o clock Jerry got out his map. 
 They should have made one of the little sec 
 tion houses along the railroad by this time, but 
 as yet not a twinkle of light from any habita 
 tion had been seen. An hour later Jerry s eyes 
 made out the dark outline of a low building a 
 little way off the trail. 
 
 " It s a ranch house," he whispered to Betty. 
 198
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " Shall we stop? Have you had enough for 
 to-night?" 
 
 Betty admitted she was sleepy and famished. 
 But as they drew near to the dark and silent 
 house the outlook was not hopeful. The house 
 was set sociably in the midst of the barnyard; 
 a pig looked out inquisitively from a rickety 
 lean-to, and some hens roosted on the front 
 window-sill. 
 
 " I don t believe we want to stay here," said 
 Jerry, " but I ll just have a look in." 
 
 The look appeared to be enough. They 
 heard him knock ; then questions and apologies, 
 and a moment later he reappeared, climbed to 
 his seat and started the car. When the house 
 had disappeared in the night, he leaned back 
 and laughed. 
 
 " It was a bachelor s establishment," he ex 
 plained, "and dirty! there were two small 
 pigs roaming about the parlor and a great pile 
 of wool in one corner. I think we ll have 
 another try at striking a section house." 
 
 For an hour they followed the trail. A great 
 moon had risen to light their path, but beyond 
 that fortune did not favor them. At midnight 
 there was still no trace of a settlement or ranch 
 house. Sid brought some food out of their 
 larder and Betty suggested they roll up in 
 
 199
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 blankets and sleep on the ground. She de 
 clared she had always had a longing to sleep 
 on the ground under the stars ; but her father 
 did not seem to share her enthusiasm. He 
 foresaw rheumatism in every joint and his face 
 grew more and more doleful when he observed 
 the others getting out the blankets. 
 
 " No one ever has rheumatism out here," Sid 
 assured him, " you ll sleep like a top and wake 
 up five years younger." 
 
 Jerry admired his own foresight when Betty 
 cried out enthusiastically over the beautiful, 
 thick army blankets he brought out for her. 
 Her father was equally well provided and was 
 given besides, out of consideration for his 
 elderly bones, the cushions and rubber coats. 
 When he had finally wrapped himself up and 
 laid down he was rather disappointed to find 
 himself fairly comfortable. 
 
 " When I was a boy," he said, forgetting his 
 disgruntled role in the memories roused by the 
 open sky above him, " I used to camp out for 
 weeks at a time. This kind of reminds me of 
 it." And he was off on a tide of reminiscence, 
 which gradually trickled down to a sleepy dis 
 connectedness and ended in a gentle snore. 
 
 He wakened next morning to a rosy dawn 
 and a delicious smell of coffee. With the night 
 
 200
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 his crossness had evaporated. Although he 
 would not have admitted it, he was five years 
 younger, as Sid had prophesied, in spite of a 
 terrific stiffness in his bones. The irresistible 
 spirit of the open was descending upon him. 
 Before they had finished their breakfast of ba 
 con (fried over a fire of dry sage brush) with 
 crackers and coffee, he was beginning to be 
 lieve there was nomadic blood in him, and 
 Fleming and Betty smiled slyly at each other. 
 
 At eight o clock they were running into Dia- 
 mondville. This coal-mining settlement lies in 
 a barren valley and to reach it they had coasted 
 down a hill two miles long. Before half this 
 distance had been covered their brake bands 
 caught fire from friction and they made the 
 rest of the descent trailing blue smoke behind 
 them. Betty s father looked rather nervous, 
 but it was noticeable that their early morning 
 run through the mountain gorges where the 
 purple gloom of night still lingered, their 
 struggles with sage brush and greasewood and 
 their final flight down the mountain trail had 
 awakened in him some latent taste for adven 
 ture. 
 
 " If Vannuccini is still here," he said, as they 
 ate a second breakfast at the hotel in Diamond- 
 ville, " I d just like to go on with him." But 
 
 201
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 they soon learned that Vannuccini had left the 
 place late the afternoon before. 
 
 " Why shouldn t we go on with Jerry, any 
 way? " Betty boldly suggested. " You know, 
 now that he has only one arm he can really use, 
 you would be such a help to him." 
 
 This view of the situation saved his pride. 
 He allowed there was something in that, 
 though it was rather odd to be riding in the 
 rival car. But anyway, he didn t mind lending 
 his aid to the expedition as far as Montpelier, 
 considering how in need of cool-headed advice 
 they seemed to be. 
 
 For Betty s sake, Jerry swallowed this cheer 
 fully. " I want to make Montpelier to-night," 
 he said. " We ll have to be off in half an hour. 
 I m afraid it will be too much for you both, 
 going on without any rest." 
 
 Betty stoutly declared she was ready for 
 anything, and her father was inclined to be 
 annoyed at the presumption that he was not up 
 to the run. In consequence the forenoon was 
 still young when the travel-stained Moun 
 taineer started on its way again with four pas 
 sengers. 
 
 Just at dark they ran into Montpelier, Ida 
 ho. In that day s work Jerry felt that he had 
 accomplished something more than was implied 
 
 202
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 in the distance covered. Two-thirds of their 
 way had been one continuous fight with sage 
 brush, which preempts the trail and spreads its 
 gigantic, stubborn growth over the land as far 
 as the eye can see. It was often necessary to 
 hew their way through, and the task fell upon 
 Sid and Betty s father. Fleming, with his 
 shoulder still in its bandages, was forced to 
 look on, which he did at first with some uneasi 
 ness, at the spectacle of Hiram D. Albright 
 with his coat off, swinging a vigorous ax. 
 
 "Don t apologize to him," Betty had whis 
 pered, " it s good for him. Don t you see he 
 begins to think the expedition rests on his 
 shoulders? " 
 
 And some feeling of this sort or perhaps 
 the exercise in that air, which is like an elixir 
 of youth, or the changing interests of the trail 
 which runs through mountain gorges and open 
 plain, had certainly vanquished his feeling of 
 resentment toward Jerry, for the time at least. 
 He was sitting amiably beside the latter, who 
 was driving, when in a stretch of sand they 
 picked up the unmistakable tire marks of the 
 Superba. They had evidently been made some 
 time before, but an overhanging ledge of 
 rocks had kept them intact from the wind. 
 
 "He was certainly going some when he 
 
 203
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 made those marks," Sid observed. Jerry 
 nodded a rueful assent. 
 
 Hiram bristled defiantly. " Well, I guess 
 we can overtake him; I don t see any reason 
 why we shouldn t if we don t dawdle around 
 here- 
 
 And the others laughed, for he had evi 
 dently forgotten he was riding in the rival 
 car. But his exclamation showed how far his 
 sympathies had been unconsciously enlisted. 
 
 Jerry s first move after he had left his pas 
 sengers at the neat little hotel in Montpelier 
 was to wire Pocatello and Arco for news of 
 Vannuccini. He had not been seen in either 
 place. Jerry was puzzled, for he felt certain 
 his rival could not have got beyond Arco, and 
 it seemed improbable that he had broken down 
 somewhere east of there. But he had learned 
 not to borrow trouble, and he ate as hearty a 
 supper as if his mind was quite at rest. 
 
 In Montpelier that evening there was a 
 "show" which seemed to be drawing half of 
 the town s thousand inhabitants. From the 
 door of the hotel Betty watched them pouring 
 into the hall men, women and babies. There 
 was already a line of baby-carriages outside 
 the hall, advertising the presence inside of 
 more mothers. As the last straggling cow- 
 
 204
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 boy and miner disappeared and the sound of 
 an aged piano being disrespectfully treated 
 came out to them Betty became possessed of 
 a desire to "just look inside and see what 
 they re doing." Her father demurred that 
 she ought to be resting, and Fleming felt a 
 little uneasy about the nature of the entertain 
 ment until Betty pointed out the perambula 
 tors. Then they gave in and both of them es 
 corted her across to the hall. 
 
 Their entrance, or, rather, the entrance of 
 Betty, made considerable stir among the ser 
 ried rank of the back rows, but attention re 
 turned with a snap to the stage a second after 
 for the Soubrette had appeared. She was a 
 matronly soubrette who looked as if she might 
 be a good mother or at a stretch a grand 
 mother! but as she lifted her skirts and exe 
 cuted a modest step or two, every man in the 
 house arose and craned his neck with simple 
 delight over the shoulder of the man ahead ! 
 
 " Say, they d kill themselves over a good 
 show!" Sid chuckled. Betty declared it was 
 pathetic. " Why, the poor things are starved! " 
 she said. 
 
 " Sure," Sid agreed, " ain t they three thou 
 sand miles from Broadway? " 
 
 That was his point of view; but when they; 
 
 205
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 left the hall the Montpelier public was uproar 
 iously happy and everybody was buying soap 
 and medicine from the members of the com 
 pany between the acts. 
 
 As Betty left the hall she was aware that 
 her father, who followed them, had stopped, 
 staring at someone in the crowd that stood for 
 want of benches at the back of the auditorium. 
 
 ;< What does father see?" she asked of 
 Jerry, and they both stepped again inside the 
 door. They saw Betty s father shouldering his 
 way through the crowd toward a man leaned 
 against the wall, conspicuous in that cheering 
 audience because of his listless and disgruntled 
 air. Betty recognized him first. 
 
 "Why, it s Jarvis!" she cried. 
 
 Jerry whistled under his breath: " Then 
 Vannuccini must be here too ! It s no use wait 
 ing in this heat," he added; " let me take you 
 over to the hotel, Betty." 
 
 When they were in the open air again Betty 
 turned toward him eagerly. " What will you 
 do now? " she asked. 
 
 " Get a good night s rest," he laughed. 
 
 She looked a little disappointed. "Oh! I 
 thought perhaps you d steal off, and get the 
 advantage of the the other car by miles be 
 fore morning." 
 
 206
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "I d like to, Betty; but it doesn t pay to 
 overdo the thing. Sid and I need sleep, and 
 besides, they say the trail from here is moun 
 tainous. It s too risky at night. You look 
 tired to death, Betty. Get a good night s rest, 
 and if we re off before you wake in the morn- 
 ing- 
 
 "Jerry Fleming!" she interrupted, "you re 
 thinking of going on without me ! " 
 
 Jerry looked uncomfortable. "Betty, you 
 know I wouldn t willingly leave you be- 
 hind- 
 
 She turned away to mount the stairs and as 
 she did so she shook a threatening finger at 
 him. 
 
 "If you leave me behind, willingly or un 
 willingly, you ll be sorry! " 
 
 Fleming asked the clerk to send Johnston 
 up as soon as he came back to the hotel, and 
 then he sought his own room. In ten minutes 
 someone knocked at his door. To his surprise 
 Betty s father walked in. He wore the ex 
 pression that his employees called the trouble- 
 ahead-look. 
 
 "Suppose you saw Jarvis?" he began. 
 
 Jerry nodded. " If he was here when we 
 came in I don t understand how we missed 
 seeing his car." 
 
 207
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "He got in after we did; the car is in the 
 hotel barn." 
 
 "Where s Vannuccini, then?" 
 
 An ominous grimness came into the older 
 man s face. "He s here in town; been here 
 since noon. Jarvis says they broke a radius 
 rod forty miles down the line. Vannuccini 
 left Jarvis to make repairs and he came in by 
 rail. When are you going to leave here? " 
 
 The thought flashed into Jerry s mind that 
 there might be an ulterior motive behind the 
 question, and his hesitation must have been ap 
 parent, for Mr. Albright spoke up testily: 
 
 " I want to know, because I m going along 
 with you ! " 
 
 Jerry s astonishment showed in his face and 
 Hiram D. seemed to feel around irritably for 
 an explanation. As none came he decided on 
 a measure of frankness. For certain reasons, 
 he did not want Vannuccini to know he was in 
 the West at all. He could depend on Jarvis, 
 who was an old employee of his, to keep his 
 mouth shut, so it was not likely Vannuccini 
 would know he and Betty had left New York. 
 
 "Until I get ready for him to know," 
 Betty s father added, with a grim smile. 
 " Now if you ll take me along with you, what 
 time shall we leave?" 
 
 208
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Jerry restrained a desire to grin widely, and 
 told him five in the morning. 
 
 " Hadn t you better make it four?" Hiram 
 turned around at the door to ask. " Get a 
 better start, you know," he added. 
 
 The earlier the better," Jerry agreed, and 
 was preparing for sleep, when Sid rushed in. 
 
 "I ve seen Vannuccini!" he said. "I left 
 the hall fifteen minutes after you did and the 
 first people I put my eye on when I got into 
 the street was Hiram D. and Jarvis. They 
 were headed down the street and I piked after 
 them. They had a look in at one of those 
 gilded-front palaces and then they went on. I 
 said to myself I might as well have a look, too. 
 Around one table the fellows were four deep 
 a-shooting craps, and I elbowed in far enough 
 to see the center of attraction was Vannuccini, 
 all right." 
 
 "Did he see you?" 
 
 "See me? He was blind to everything but 
 the nifty little pile of blues he raked in regu 
 larly! Someone told me he d been playing 
 since one o clock. I wonder what Hiram D. 
 thinks of Monte now?" 
 
 " I think I know," Jerry laughed. " Dig 
 out, now, and let me sleep. Four in the morn 
 ing, sharp." 
 
 209
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 It was eight in the morning when Betty 
 struggled awake with the consciousness that 
 she was missing something. The premonition 
 deepened to certainty when she knocked at her 
 father s door and got no answer. She hurried 
 down to the office and was handed a note by 
 the clerk. It ran: 
 
 4 A. M. 
 Dear Betty: 
 
 Take eleven o clock train for Pocatello. I 
 have directed the clerk to wire the Davis House 
 in Pocatello to have a porter meet you at the 
 train, so you ll be all right. Wait for me at 
 the hotel. Expect to get in there before dark. 
 Am just off with Jerry. Dad. 
 
 It was an indignant young woman who ate 
 a solitary breakfast after reading this note; 
 and the more she reflected the more indignant 
 she became. To be sent on by rail like a piece 
 of baggage ! It was an affront ! 
 
 " If I had enough money I d go straight 
 home and let them see how they would like it 
 without me!" she said to herself, and in her 
 abstraction she walked out of the dining-room 
 and almost into the arms of Signer Vannuc- 
 cini. 
 
 210
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 There is no word which adequately describes 
 the expression on the Signer s mobile face 
 when he recognized Betty. If he had not been 
 so quick at assuming a look of rapture, one 
 would have said he appeared for an instant 
 taken aback. But he rallied finely. He de 
 clared his gratification was only equaled by 
 his surprise at finding Miss Albright in this 
 out-of-the-way spot. But while he talked he 
 was plainly looking behind her for someone. 
 
 " My father and I are en route to Port 
 land," she explained. 
 
 "Then I shall have the pleasure of seeing 
 your father before I leave?" 
 
 "No, I think not," Betty laughed, "my 
 father has deserted me in the most shameless 
 fashion. He went on this morning in Jerry 
 Fleming s car." 
 
 The Signer might well have said "The 
 Devil!" aloud, for that is the way he looked. 
 But he only remarked that was indeed an honor 
 for Mr. Fleming, and what was Miss Albright 
 going to do now? 
 
 " I suppose I shall tag along in a stuffy 
 train," Betty sighed. And then, just as the 
 playwright manages the entrance of the temp 
 ter at exactly the right moment, Vannuccini 
 stepped aside and revealed his car at the door. 
 
 211
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 It was obviously pawing the earth preparatory 
 to a glorious flight through the clear morning 
 air ; it was enticingly ready, as if he had rubbed 
 a magic lamp and conjured it up; it was in 
 Betty s eyes altogether irresistible! 
 
 "Would you like to overtake your father?" 
 Vannuccini suggested cleverly. 
 
 Betty did not allow herself to reflect ; if she 
 had she would have been waiting an hour later 
 for the eleven o clock train, instead of gliding 
 away from the last houses of Montpelier in a 
 big red motor car with the trail to Pocatello 
 stretching out before her, the mountains catch 
 ing the sun, the whole morning world smiling 
 before them, and in her heart a wonderful, 
 scared delight at her own daring.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WHILE Betty was eating her break 
 fast in the hotel at Montpelier 
 Fleming was the unwilling par 
 ticipant in an adventure that came unpleas 
 antly near to ending abruptly his earthly ca 
 reer. From Montpelier westward along the 
 Bear River to Soda Springs the road twists 
 amidst most impressive and beautiful moun 
 tain scenery. Often it winds a perilous way 
 around the face of some projecting rock, or 
 plunges unexpectedly to the shadows of a for 
 bidding pass. Between are valleys, made fer 
 tile by irrigation, but presenting difficulties 
 of their own, for each irrigation ditch is from 
 six to ten feet wide and eighteen inches deep, 
 and each has to be forded. This made their 
 progress slow, and when they struck the steep 
 grades between Soda Springs and McCam- 
 mon the Nero, geared low as it was, could 
 only take them on low speed. 
 
 Just west of Soda Springs is a steep rocky 
 pass, with a perpendicular wall on the right 
 and an unguarded drop of several hundred 
 
 213
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 feet on the left. To lighten the labor of the 
 car as much as possible Mr. Albright and Sid 
 walked up the pass. In places the trail resem 
 bled rough steps, with its out-cropping rocks, 
 and up this difficult way the car was slowly 
 climbing when, just as the rear wheels struck 
 an unusually obtrusive rock, the engine, forced 
 beyond its endurance, began to " die." Flem 
 ing threw out the clutch, and as the car 
 stopped and then started to back, he pushed 
 down hard on the foot brake. The brake lin 
 ings, worn out and burned by continuous 
 mountain work, refused to hold on the forty- 
 per-cent. grade, and the car continued to back, 
 gaining speed each instant. The sprags, which 
 might have prevented the descent, had been un 
 coupled earlier in the day to pry a boulder from 
 the trail, and Fleming could only curse his own 
 carelessness in not replacing them. As a last 
 resource he seized the lever and threw in the 
 low speed clutch. 
 
 This was too much for the badly worn chain 
 to stand, and it snapped. 
 
 Mr. Albright and Sid saw what had hap 
 pened. With one impulse they turned and 
 fled for their lives down the road. On that 
 narrow trail, with a wall of rock on one hand 
 and a precipice on the other, it was not wise to 
 
 214
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 stand still and watch the downward rush of a 
 runaway motor car. Sid was ahead and his 
 quick eye saw a ledge of rock standing a little 
 way out from the wall to their left. He scram 
 bled upon it and pulled Betty s father after 
 him. They were barely in time, for the car, 
 freed from all restraint, had doubled its speed, 
 and Sid, his voice shrill with terror, called out 
 to Fleming to jump. 
 
 But Fleming was coolly watching the road 
 over his shoulder. Steering backward he was 
 trying to keep the car on the trail till he reached 
 the level. He was aware of the horrified faces 
 of the two men on their shelf of safety, and in 
 spite of his peril the amusing thought crossed 
 his mind that Hiram D. was certainly getting 
 "limbered up"! The next instant he had 
 caught sight of a rock projecting perhaps a 
 foot into the trail. His decision came imme 
 diately ; he steered the car squarely into it with 
 the right rear wheel. 
 
 The shock threw him backward almost into 
 the tonneau, and when he recovered his balance 
 he found himself gazing down on the stunted 
 herbage at the bottom of a two-hundred-foot 
 canyon. For the car, with one rear wheel 
 jammed against the rock, had waltzed half 
 around, and it now hung with its front wheels 
 
 215
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 over the cliff. Very gingerly, but not wasting 
 any time over it, Jerry climbed out. Then he 
 drew a long breath and called out to Hiram 
 D., who was hurrying down the trail : 
 
 " See the advantage of an engine in the mid 
 dle front wheels over the cliff and a nice 
 balance kept!" 
 
 It took them the rest of the morning to jack 
 up the car and swing it back to the trail; the 
 broken chain had also to be repaired. In the 
 final journey up the pass Fleming drove the 
 car and Sid ran behind with a huge stone to 
 block the wheels the instant the engine began 
 to falter. Mr. Albright trudged very will 
 ingly. He could not be induced to ride until 
 they had left the pass, in spite of the fact that 
 the unusual exertion in that high altitude made 
 him puff till he was purple in the face. 
 
 For the rest of the day they ran without 
 special incident through some of the most beau 
 tiful mountain scenery in the world. Oc 
 casionally a snowy peak caught the sun; they 
 made their way between massive lava forma 
 tions, grotesquely shaped like goblin sentinels 
 of the trail ; on which scores of eagles perched, 
 quite unafraid, as if they knew themselves pro 
 tected by the law. 
 
 Houses were infrequent. They rode through 
 216
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 an apparently deserted country except for an 
 occasional sheep outfit or emigrant s wagon. 
 Prospectors have left their mark on the moun 
 tain sides hastily dug holes, like the work of 
 a rabbit or badger, while two or three deserted 
 villages, their houses the homes of snakes and 
 small animals, bear witness to the restless, con 
 suming haste of the gold-seeker. Now and 
 then, along the railroad, is a general store, in 
 cluding in its stock everything from a paper 
 of pins to a coffin. The storekeeper himself 
 is often hotel proprietor, chemist, and under 
 taker in one. Often to these industries he adds 
 a saloon with a faro table and roulette wheel, 
 and it was in a place of this kind that Fleming 
 found gasolene a dollar a gallon and tomatoes 
 ninety cents a can. 
 
 The last two miles of their run into Pocatello 
 lay through the Bannock Indian reservation; 
 and in the main street of that city Sid Johns 
 ton had his first sight of the Red Man in all 
 his painted glory. It was barely an hour after 
 their arrival that Fleming found him buying 
 an Indian belt cunningly embroidered in the 
 latest Bannock fashion. Sid would fain have 
 conveyed the impression that it was a belt for 
 masculine wear, but Fleming remarked that it 
 was very small. Sid looked embarrassed an 
 
 217
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 unusual act of grace! and admitted that he 
 was buying it to send to Jacinta. 
 
 ; Kind of reminded me of her," he said, 
 growing redder. Fleming restrained a whistle, 
 but neither of them had time to say anything 
 more on that subject, for down the street after 
 them came Mr. Albright, breathless from hur 
 rying and with a distracted look in his eyes. 
 
 "Betty isn t at the hotel!" he cried. "I 
 wired Montpelier and they returned that she 
 had left there at eight-thirty in a red automo 
 bile!" 
 
 Fleming s lips set themselves, in a straight 
 line. With Vannuccini! "He should have 
 overtaken us, for we lost four hours getting 
 the car back on the trail," he said. 
 
 ; There s another road ten or fifteen miles 
 south of the trail we took; he probably fol 
 lowed that one," said Sid. 
 
 Betty s father and Betty s suitor looked at 
 each other with haggard brows; they had at 
 last a mutual sympathy. 
 
 :< If I ever get her back to New York, * 
 groaned her father, "she ll never get into an 
 automobile again." 
 
 I might take the car and go back and look 
 for them," Jerry said. "But no that s no 
 use, for I don t know what route he s taken. 
 
 218
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Hang it all! what right had he got to 
 
 he stopped short, listening. There was the 
 near-by, unmistakable hum of a motor car ap 
 proaching. Even as they looked at each other 
 Vannuccini s big red Superba passed them and 
 drew up amidst the absorbed attention of every 
 one in sight, at the door of the hotel near by. 
 
 Fleming and Mr. Albright hastened their 
 footsteps and were thus just in time to greet 
 Betty with countenances of entire disapproval. 
 She saw them coming and she made an effort 
 to forestall criticism by a light-hearted greet 
 ing. The usual knot of interested citizens was 
 gathering and Fleming hastened to make a 
 way for her through the crowd into the hotel. 
 He could see that she was very pale and that 
 she was not as gay as the tone of her greeting. 
 He noticed also that when she left the car she 
 ignored Vannuccini s hand; she had said 
 " Good-by " when he said " Good-night." 
 
 " What in heaven s name possessed you to do 
 such a thing, Betty?" her father began storm- 
 ily, as he followed them into the hotel parlor. 
 
 Betty leaned wearily against the marble top 
 table that adorned the center of the room. 
 
 " Please, Dad, don t scold me," she said with 
 a quiver in her voice. "I m so tired and and 
 upset. I know I shouldn t have done it, but 
 
 21.Q
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 the car was there all ready, and I didn t like 
 it the way you d left me, and there was Jarvis, 
 that I d known all my life and I thought it 
 would be all right. Mr. Vannuccini said he d 
 overtake you before noon. I really thought he 
 could but he didn t." 
 
 " He should have overtaken us," said Jerry 
 sternly, " for we lost four hours near Soda 
 Springs." 
 
 "That s what I say!" Betty s father broke 
 in. "What was he doing? " 
 
 "Did you say Soda Springs?" Betty ex 
 claimed. " See here, did you back down a hill 
 and nearly go over a cliff?" 
 
 Yes! how did you know? " 
 
 "We stopped in Soda Springs for water 
 and a young fellow on a white pony told us 
 about your car running away down hill. He 
 had seen the whole thing from the bottom of 
 the pass. Do you remember passing him? " 
 
 Fleming said he remembered him, and Betty 
 went on to tell how she had expected every mile 
 to see the blue car ahead of them. 
 
 " I couldn t understand why we didn t catch 
 up, for the boy said you were only four miles 
 farther on and your car seemed to be stuck. 
 Mr. Vannuccini asked the boy particularly 
 about which trail to take " 
 
 220
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "And then he took the other one," Jerry fin 
 ished dryly. 
 
 But Betty was not inclined to discuss the 
 subject further. She seemed dispirited and 
 tired. She told her father she was sorry he 
 had been worried on her account, with such un 
 usual meekness that the old gentleman was en 
 tirely disarmed and said he was afraid she was 
 going to be ill. She reassured him on that 
 point, but added, sadly: 
 
 " I don t think I care about automobiling, 
 any more not for a long time, anyway. I 
 want something to eat and then I m going to 
 turn in." 
 
 Vannuccini did not appear in the dining- 
 room, and they concluded he had gone to 
 another hotel. Betty was very silent during 
 the meal. Fleming himself had little to say. 
 He had been more hurt than he cared to show 
 by Betty s escapade and he felt that some 
 slight sign of contrition on her part was his 
 due, but none was forthcoming. She accepted 
 without a demur her father s plan to take the 
 train next day for Portland. 
 
 From Pocatello Fleming s route would leave 
 the main branch of the Oregon Short Line and 
 run across the lava desert to Hailey and on to 
 Boise City. It was far from advisable that 
 
 221
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Betty and her father should follow him into a 
 district so far from the railroad; and for her 
 part Betty seemed quite resigned to the tamer 
 means of locomotion. 
 
 It was only when they were saying their 
 good-nights and good-bys that she smiled at 
 him with something of the kindness she had 
 shown him the day they had carried her father 
 through Granger. They were standing at the 
 foot of the stairs and, as her father went off 
 to inquire about trains, she turned to Jerry 
 with her old frankness. 
 
 The Superba can t climb hills like your car, 
 Jerry," she said. " It s a wonder on good, level 
 roads, but it s like moving a man-of-war to 
 get it out of an irrigation ditch, and there s too 
 much weight up in front to rush them the 
 way you do! " 
 
 Jerry was silent. Betty looked up at him 
 keenly. 
 
 You don t like it what I did to-day, do 
 you, Jerry?" 
 
 He looked down at her very soberly. " No, 
 I don t, Betty. I never like you to do what 
 doesn t seem to to suit your kind of a girl." 
 
 To his surprise she made a gesture toward an 
 open door near them which led to a side veran 
 dah. Why did my accepting Mr. Vannuc- 
 
 222
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 cini s invitation to ride with him seem unlike 
 me? " she asked, as they walked to the other end 
 of the deserted gallery. 
 
 "Well, in the first place you put yourself 
 in the way to be misunderstood." 
 
 " But there was Jarvis ! " 
 Yes, I know; but you don t know Vannuc- 
 cini very well; he is a foreigner, not used to 
 our ways he might misunderstand 
 
 She nodded. " He did misunderstand," she 
 said, in a low voice. 
 
 Jerry uttered an exclamation of anger, but 
 she held up her hand. " Oh, it is what I de 
 served! But I won t tell Dad; he s so quick 
 tempered. You see, I suspected Vannuccini 
 took the wrong trail at Soda Springs, for Jar- 
 vis leaned over from the tonneau, as if to cor 
 rect him, and he got such a glare for his pains 
 that he kept still. It set me to thinking, then, 
 and before noon I had made up my mind we 
 were not going to overtake you. I expressed 
 some surprise and Mr. Vannuccini hinted that 
 he had not supposed I really wanted to catch up 
 with you! It it was well, horrid! Not so 
 much anything he said, but I felt there was a 
 difference in his attitude, someway. If it hadn t 
 been for good old Jarvis, I should have been 
 afraid, and that s the truth!" 
 
 223
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 She drew a long breath as if the confession 
 had lightened her heart. 
 
 " Please don t say anything," she added as 
 she caught a glimpse of Jerry s indignant face. 
 " I want Dad to find out everything about our 
 Italian friend for himself. I don t feel like 
 discussing him with father, someway. I think 
 I m rather disillusioned, and and it hurts to 
 be disillusioned, you know." 
 
 Yes, I know," he said gravely. 
 
 She glanced up at him quickly. "Are you 
 disillusioned, with me, Jerry? I shouldn t 
 blame you if you were, but I don t want you 
 to be. To-day I ve learned she paused 
 and a flush passed over her face, as if the words 
 were difficult " I have learned to appreciate 
 you. I might have lived all my life in the East 
 and thought you a nice, amusing boy; but just 
 these last few days have made me feel as if I 
 want to apologize to you. There " she 
 finished with a little laugh " There is my hand 
 on the apology! " 
 
 He looked at her hand as it lay in his brown, 
 hard palm; but only for an instant. It was 
 such a sweet, frank little hand that it demanded 
 something more than calm contemplation. He 
 put his other hand over it. 
 
 " Betty, Betty! " he whispered, "you mustn t 
 
 224
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 apologize to me. Whatever you do is right 
 and I love you!" 
 
 But she drew back a little at that. " No, you 
 must not say that. This morning, when I 
 started out with Mr. Vannuccini, I knew he 
 was capable of a mean act toward you, but I 
 went just the same. He wired me a lie about 
 you and Jacinta, and I believed it I haven t 
 been a good friend, Jerry, and I won t have 
 you thinking I am anything but a self-willed, 
 reckless 
 
 But she never finished that sentence, for 
 something in her uplifted face gave him the 
 courage he should have had before. He was 
 no longer a boy to be abashed by her laughter ; 
 he was a man deeply in love, and he knew the 
 moment had come when he must face the issue 
 for the last time. 
 
 "Betty, look at me," he said as he caught 
 her two hands between his own; "you are the 
 one girl in the world, to me the sweetest, the 
 best. I love you, I don t need to tell you that, 
 I don t care what lies may have been told 
 about me if you don t believe them, dear. But 
 I can t wait any longer. I must know one 
 thing. Do you care for me, like that, the 
 least little bit? " 
 
 She did not answer at once, but there was 
 
 225
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 a little break in her voice as she said: "If 
 you ll let my hands go please; I can t think 
 without my hands 
 
 And then as they fluttered out of his grasp 
 he gained a despairing courage. He drew 
 her toward him as he said: 
 
 " Betty, Betty, if you have to think about 
 it you don t love me 
 
 He could not believe that she had not re 
 buffed him, that she did not slip away from 
 him with her old laugh ; but a sort of incredu 
 lous rapture swept him when she looked up 
 at him with shining, wondering eyes. 
 
 "I do care I love you, Jerry. You ve 
 won!" she whispered. 
 
 Inside the hotel Betty s father wandered 
 around exasperatedly. He said to himself 
 that Betty ought to be in bed; where she had 
 gone to he couldn t make out. And Sid was 
 looking for Fleming. He wanted to know at 
 what hour they would start in the morning 
 and, in the meantime, he was yawning cavern- 
 like up and down the place. He and Betty s 
 father were a regular chorus of disapproval; 
 they looked everywhere, but they did not know 
 about the little verandah. Which was just as 
 
 226
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 well, for there was an amazing number of last 
 words to be said. 
 
 " You ve just got to beat him, now, Jerry 
 dear," Betty said for the fifth time. 
 
 "I know it. I ll be a pauper if I don t; 
 have to begin all over again ; don t know when 
 we could get married in that case 
 
 " And Dad would be another lion in the 
 way. If you lose this race though, he s had 
 a fair sample of your difficulties now. But 
 you won t lose, you mustn t! I must give you 
 something for good luck. Here the very 
 thing! my scarab." 
 
 They discovered that the green scarab would 
 not go over the second joint of his little finger, 
 so it was carefully anchored to his watch chain. 
 This took time, and then there was the matter 
 of telegrams to be arranged. Fleming prom 
 ised to wire her from Boise, Burns and Prine- 
 ville to the Hotel Portland. There was some 
 unavoidable lingering over these details, and 
 when they finally sauntered inside with a finely 
 casual air, they were met by Hiram D. Al 
 bright and Sid in a state which Betty described 
 as " foaming over." 
 
 But nothing mattered to Fleming. He 
 watched Betty as she ran up the stairs and 
 
 227
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 then turned to call back " Good luck! " and he 
 felt certain no better luck could befall him. 
 But all the same he was going to make the 
 great effort of his life in the next few days. 
 He threw back his shoulders and said: 
 
 " Four o clock in the morning, Sid or sup 
 pose we make it three? " 
 
 228
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 A Fleming drove silently out of Poca- 
 tello, he acknowledged that the black 
 hour before the dawn is not the most 
 inspiring time to begin the day s work. But 
 he had spent an hour before he went to bed 
 poring over his map and he determined, if pos 
 sible, to make Cottonwood ranch that night. 
 The ranch, famous over half the State for its 
 hospitality, lay a hundred miles from Black- 
 foot, straight across the desert. In order to 
 gain its shelter before night, he must leave 
 Black foot, twenty-five miles to the north of 
 Pocatello, by eight. 
 
 But the best-laid route of the motorist is 
 apt to gang agley. It was entirely the fault 
 of a stretch of sand and an Indian cow- 
 puncher, who could make himself plain only 
 in choice Bannock talk. The sand they en 
 countered soon after daylight, beyond Ross 
 Forks. It proved no obstacle whatever, when 
 they had attacked it with their sand-tires; but, 
 somewhere in the middle of it, Fleming lost 
 the trail and wandered off on a deceptive side- 
 issue of the main road, which lured him on and 
 
 229
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 then left him abruptly, without a landmark 
 to hint his position. 
 
 For an hour they circled hungrily (having 
 banked on breakfast in Blackfoot) among a 
 maze of hills, big and little, and, just as it oc 
 curred to them that their predicament was 
 really serious, they sighted a sheep outfit, 
 hailed it, and learned that, if they wanted to 
 reach Blackfoot, they must cut across coun 
 try twenty miles to the northeast. This 
 sounded simple, but, in reality, proved to be 
 like driving through a gigantic maze. They 
 had to wind their way among innumerable 
 hills, until they lost all sense of direction, and 
 finally were forced to fall back on the com 
 pass. 
 
 At noon they hailed with joy a tiny settle 
 ment. They descended upon it and found it 
 was a Mormon village called Moreland. The 
 first woman they met on the one street of the 
 little town was simply attired in a blouse and 
 a pair of blue jean overalls. She stared at 
 their car with the frank curiosity everyone else 
 was showing; but exhibited no inclination to 
 scamper behind anything. Evidently she had 
 forgotten the blue jean part of her attire. 
 Presently another woman similarly dressed 
 appeared in a near-by doorway, and then two 
 
 230
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 girls, arm in arm, came down the street. They 
 were also in overalls, and Sid could contain his 
 curiosity no longer. He hailed the next man 
 they met and was informed that Moreland is 
 a beet sugar town and all the women work in 
 the beet fields. For convenience sake the over 
 all had been adopted as the correct thing in 
 working dress. 
 
 They were invited to dinner by a patriarch 
 with a numerous family. It was an austere 
 and unsympathetic meal, preceded by an end 
 less prayer and unenlivened by such unneces 
 sary concessions to the flesh as coffee or an 
 afternoon pipe. They were told that Black- 
 foot lay to the east some twenty miles. In 
 their wanderings they had circled around the 
 Indian town and there was plainly nothing to 
 be gained in going back to it. With gallons 
 of gasolene and their replenished water tanks, 
 why not strike across the desert to Cotton- 
 wood ranch? It lay seventy miles west, a 
 tiny oasis in the Great Snake River desert. 
 Almost to a certainty they knew Vannuccini 
 had by this time left Pocatello. Until he ran 
 into the lava district he would find the roads, 
 with their rocky foundations, exactly of the 
 sort on which his car, as Betty had said, was 
 " wonderful." Obviously then it was no time 
 
 231
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 to be prudent. At one o clock they left their 
 Mormon friends behind and had launched 
 themselves on the plains. 
 
 Out of Moreland they ran for half an hour 
 through what is known as the " Rabbit Coun 
 try." Rabbits fled in front of them and scur 
 ried away to the right and to the left of them. 
 The face of the country was flecked with bits 
 of rabbit fur from the last rabbit drive, and 
 every farmer they met had his grievous story 
 to tell of the pest, which has become as one of 
 the plagues of Egypt in that section of Idaho. 
 Then even the rabbit is left behind and the 
 desert begins. 
 
 From Lost River on the north, to the Great 
 Snake on the south, stretches this waste of 
 lava. For a hundred miles there is only one 
 water hole. Wild cattle and wild horses sweep 
 over this great plain. Scorpions dart in and 
 out under the lava rocks and the familiar 
 rattlesnake gives way to the " side-winder " 
 variety. In the mountains, which stretch 
 away to the north and west like a shadowy 
 wall, are silvertip bear and mountain horses. 
 
 Thirty-five miles west of Moreland they 
 sighted the two buttes, Big Butte and Middle 
 Butte, between which is the ranch of "Big 
 Jim" Murray, famous as an Indian fighter 
 
 232
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 and scout for a long line of fighting generals, 
 from Custer to Miles. From the top of Big 
 Butte he has piped a mountain spring five 
 miles to his ranch, and this precious fluid he dis 
 penses to the followers of the trail at twenty- 
 five cents a pail. The Murrays, thirty-five 
 miles from the nearest neighbor, received 
 Fleming and Sid with the most genuine hos 
 pitality; they were ready to give away even 
 water with a lavish hand. But Fleming 
 looked at his tanks and decided he had enough 
 to carry them across to Cottonwood. He did 
 not care to add a pound to the weight he al 
 ready carried; but, later in the day, he was to 
 realize what it means to run out of water in 
 that arid region. 
 
 For, just before sunset, twenty miles be 
 yond Jim Murray s ranch and half way to 
 Cottonwood, they picked up the trail from 
 Arco, and, in the lava dust of this trail, were 
 the tire tracks of the Superba. For a moment 
 Fleming felt stunned with the surprise of this 
 discovery. He had been so absolutely confi 
 dent Vannuccini was behind them that he could 
 not believe in the evidence before him until 
 they rounded a crater-like formation and 
 caught the flash of the sun on the Italian s 
 car, not more than a mile and a half ahead. 
 
 233
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Sid, who maintained a disconsolate silence 
 from the moment they ran across the Su- 
 perba s tire marks, suddenly leaned over the 
 dash and pointed out a line of moisture al 
 ready drying in the heat of the sun. 
 
 " By George ! his radiator s leaking," he ex 
 claimed, " and leaking bad, too." 
 
 The occupants of the red car had evidently 
 discovered their mishap, for they had stopped 
 and, as Jerry overtook them, Jarvis, the me 
 chanic, was examining his radiator with an 
 anxious face. A third man had dismounted 
 from the car. He was a native, by the dry 
 and burnt look of his skin and the comfort 
 able hang of his six-shooter. Sid made a guess 
 that Vannuccini, who had evidently followed 
 the Arco trail, had picked up a guide at Black- 
 foot. 
 
 They re going to ask us for water," Sid 
 predicted, and he was right. As they ranged 
 alongside the partially disabled car, Vannuc 
 cini saluted affably. 
 
 "We re very fortunate to be overtaken, 
 for you see" with a comprehensive gesture 
 " our predicament. Can you let us have 
 some water? I think a gallon would take us 
 to what is the name of the place? yes, 
 Muldoon." 
 
 234.
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 In the half minute Vannuccini was speak 
 ing, an extraordinary number of thoughts 
 crowded through Fleming s mind. Beyond 
 his greeting the night before in Pocatello, he 
 had not exchanged a word with his rival since 
 they parted outside of Medicine Bow. Van 
 nuccini s voice brought back, like a flash, that 
 moment and the Italian s " Permit me," as he 
 took the road ahead of the car that had res 
 cued him. On the top of this memory crowded 
 Betty s experience of yesterday. 
 
 " How far is it to Muldoon? " he asked. 
 
 The Westerner squinted at the trail. " It s 
 a right smart walk and a short ride. Bout 
 twelve miles, I make it." 
 
 Fleming looked at Vannuccini. "I ve got 
 just about enough water to get to Muldoon 
 and none to give away, I m afraid." 
 
 It was on his tongue to suggest an expedi 
 ent ; but human nature was too strong for him. 
 He threw in the clutch and glided away with 
 out another look at Vannuccini s astonished 
 and angry face. Half a mile further on he 
 stopped. 
 
 " No use," he said. " I can t do such a dog 
 mean trick as that! Sid, look in the tonneau 
 and bring out that yellow bag near my suit 
 case. Yes, I know it s bran. No, I m not go- 
 
 235
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 ing to offer it to them to eat. Jump in and 
 don t waste time staring at me like a moon 
 struck idiot." 
 
 Back to the stranded car they went. Jarvis 
 was preparing to go to work at the radiator 
 with the soldering irons. 
 
 " Here," Fleming called curtly; " try this in 
 your radiator." 
 
 Vannuccini took the bag as if he suspected 
 a practical joke, and Jarvis said, " Bran! what 
 do you do with it? " in a puzzled tone. 
 
 "What water you ve got in your radiator 
 is hot, isn t it? Well, pour in a handful of 
 that bran and I think you will find it will help 
 you out," Fleming explained. 
 
 Jarvis followed instructions. Almost im 
 mediately the bran began to drip through the 
 crevices in a half -cooked state; in three min 
 utes it had caked and \vas choking up the leaks 
 in a surprisingly effective manner. 
 
 Fleming did not wait for comments. He 
 turned the car and took up the trail at a lively 
 pace. 
 
 " That s a nifty little trick," Sid remarked. 
 " It beats soldering. Why, you ve saved them 
 two hours, the shape their radiator was in. Do 
 you think that bran will hold? " 
 
 " I ve heard that it will ; but I don t know 
 
 236
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 from experience. Kind of hope that it won t; 
 now that my conscience is satisfied." 
 
 And Fleming laughed with a gleam of ex 
 citement in his eyes. "Did you notice how his 
 car was traveling, Sid? It s just as I said 
 too heavy, and the balance is wrong. They 
 tell me the sand is eighteen inches deep part of 
 the way through Oregon. Now, if you and I 
 don t get ourselves lost again, my boy, we re 
 going to show that red wagon our heels the 
 rest of the way." 
 
 Sid said " Sure " cheerfully. But he looked 
 at the trail, winding everlastingly among what 
 appeared to be the craters of extinct volcanoes. 
 It was such a thread-like clue, through such a 
 forbidding and baffling waste, that any predic 
 tion seemed presumptuous. If they lost that 
 slender guide, they might wander for days 
 without finding it again. The very thought 
 made him thirsty. He wiped the thick gray 
 dust from his face and eyes and, as he did so, 
 a turn in the trail brought them within sight 
 of Muldoon all there was of it a house or 
 two, set down amidst lava hills and general 
 loneliness. 
 
 There is a mail in Muldoon and a post-mis 
 tress, who receives and distributes it once in 
 ten days, and she told Fleming that Cotton- 
 
 237
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 wood lay about eight miles west, " Straight 
 west and good trail." 
 
 He refilled his water tanks and took up the 
 trail once more. Darkness had settled around 
 them darkness through which hills were 
 looming when the trail led them into a little 
 valley. Here, with the mountains circling 
 them on three sides are the half dozen log 
 buildings that make up Cottonwood ranch. It 
 is a tiny oasis, protected from the desert by 
 the hills, unsurveyed and untaxed, made fer 
 tile by irrigation and rich in several minerals. 
 With the unusual sound of Fleming s car, the 
 Drake family came to the door. Like the 
 majority of Westerners, they had the fine art 
 of simple hospitality. Mrs. Drake spread for 
 them a supper which was as a banquet to their 
 thirst and hunger, and the men of the family 
 offered them a bear hunt if they would stop a 
 couple of days. 
 
 But Fleming had cast himself for the role 
 of the indefatigable youth whose motto was 
 "Excelsior!" He begrudged the necessary 
 hours of sleep; he would like to have gone on 
 all night. Before daylight next morning he 
 had routed out Sid, and they oiled up and 
 filled their tanks and were on the road by sun 
 rise. 
 
 238
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Two hours later they were creating a sen 
 sation in Hailey as they drove up to the Ferris 
 House for breakfast. Two horses, with their 
 big fifty-pound cowboy saddles, hitched in 
 front of a restaurant and dance hall, executed 
 a jig of terror and then disappeared into the 
 landscape, and everyone who was stirring in 
 Hailey ran to doors and windows. But this 
 was a mild disturbance compared to the effect 
 the car produced on a drove of sheep beyond 
 Hailey. They were rounded up in a cup-like 
 valley, four thousand of them, circling about 
 slowly in a blinding cloud of dust. As the car 
 approached them, a surge of terror struck the 
 entire woolly mass up the valley and, as Flem 
 ing looked back, the drovers were galloping 
 wildly to keep the band from stampeding to 
 the hills. 
 
 Between Hailey and Boise the sand and 
 cinders through which they had traveled the 
 day before gave way to a hilly trail with long 
 stretches of sage brush and lava rocks. Some 
 times for miles they followed it over solid lava 
 beds, as smooth as an asphalt pavement, but 
 with frequent fissures in the rocky surface that 
 made high speed dangerous. 
 
 Before sundown they had made the ninety 
 miles to Boise. It was in fact the best day 
 
 239
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 they had made for a long time, in spite of bat 
 tery troubles which only Fleming s resource 
 prevented from causing a serious predicament. 
 
 They were running along at a good speed, 
 just after their dinner at Canyon Creek, when 
 they noticed that the engine was losing power. 
 Sid got out and tested the batteries carefully. 
 Then he took off his cap and scratched his head 
 despondently. 
 
 " The best I can make my ammeter read is 
 four," he said; "and it s fifteen miles before 
 we can get a new set of dry cells. It looks to 
 me as if we were up against it hard." 
 
 Fleming looked at the batteries thought 
 fully. " I think I know a trick that will bring 
 us into Boise, even if this set of cells stops 
 making a spark," he said. 
 
 They had not made two miles farther when 
 his ingenuity was put to the test; for the en 
 gine, after numerous missings, suddenly struck 
 work, and, before Fleming could throw out the 
 clutch, the car stopped dead. Fleming di 
 rected Sid to take the cells out of the battery 
 box. Then, with a quarter-inch drill, he made 
 a hole in the top of each cell and poured into 
 this hole about two tablespoonsful of water. 
 
 Sid sniffed incredulously ; but a test showed 
 that, with this homoeopathic treatment, the 
 
 240
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 worn-out cells had returned to life. The dial 
 of the ammeter showed eleven amperes. Sid 
 returned the batteries and connected them, 
 and a half turn of the starting crank set the 
 engine to running as merrily as ever. 
 
 Fleming drew a long breath of relief. "I 
 didn t know whether that stunt would work," 
 he remarked; "but I m mighty glad it did. 
 That s about as close to being stranded as I 
 ever want to come in this dried-up corner of 
 the world." 
 
 In Boise they reveled in the luxury of bath 
 and supper at the best hotel they had met with 
 since leaving Chicago. Fleming felt that 
 nothing could add to the general Tightness of 
 things, when he found he could telephone di 
 rectly to Betty s hotel in Portland. It was 
 impossible to keep an exultant note out of his 
 voice as he told her they were three-quarters 
 across Idaho, in fighting trim, and a lap or 
 two ahead of the Italian car. 
 
 "We ought to make Ontario, Oregon, to 
 morrow night," he said; "then in about five 
 days to Wapinitia and then Mount Hood. If 
 I do it I ll be the first to cross the Cascades in 
 a motor car 
 
 "Unless the Signor crosses ahead of you! " 
 Betty interrupted. 
 
 241]
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " Well, I don t think he will. His car isn t 
 built for wading swamps and climbing rocks 
 as I ve said before. But we ll see. What s 
 that? Oh, yes, I ll take care of myself. It s 
 awfully good to hear your voice, Betty." 
 
 And the conversation at this point left 
 motor cars and became too personal to be lis 
 tened to honorably. 
 
 The next morning Sid and Fleming were up 
 before daylight and at work on the car. The 
 pistons were taken out and examined; the 
 badly worn rear tires were changed for a pair 
 with new Bailey-treads; a set of new dry cells 
 was installed, and, to get the maximum of 
 power for the mountains before them, Spitfire 
 plugs were substituted for their badly corroded 
 old ones. For the next 350 miles they would 
 have to depend on their own resources. Boise 
 was their last town of any size until they 
 reached Portland. They could count on no 
 convenient garage for repairs. Even black 
 smiths shops are few and far between in Ore 
 gon, and they must carry with them every part 
 of the car that might need replacement on the 
 long journey across the State. When they left 
 Boise, in the middle of the forenoon, escorted 
 by Jim Taylor, the garage owner, in his little 
 old-fashioned Franklin, the Mountaineer was 
 
 242
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 like a veteran ready for a week of forced 
 marches. 
 
 That day they found a bridge down over 
 the Little Boise River, and were obliged to 
 cross it in extremely precarious fashion on 
 two punts lashed together and poled by Mexi 
 can herders. A second ferry across the Snake 
 River landed them on the Oregon shore after 
 a sixty-mile drive through choking alkali dust, 
 relieved only by patches of barren prairie and 
 sage. 
 
 The next day they left the railroad behind 
 them. They would not see it again for 350 
 miles. In two days hard traveling they 
 reached Prineville, a prosperous little town, 
 very nearly the geographical center of the 
 great State. For 200 miles around Prineville 
 every necessity of life not manufactured or 
 grown in the vicinity is brought in by 
 " freighters." On the trail from Ontario to 
 Burns Fleming s car frequently passed these 
 twenty-horse outfits, driven with a single line, 
 plodding west through a cloud of dust, carry 
 ing to the interior anything from a paper of 
 pins to a piano. They found that any part of 
 the trail traveled by these freighters presented 
 few difficulties to their car ; but, for a hundred 
 miles between Burns and Prineville, there is 
 
 243
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 practically no freighting, and Fleming ran 
 into sand oftentimes half way up to the hubs. 
 They reached Prineville at midnight, after 
 having literally fought their way for sixteen 
 hours through irrigation ditches, rocks and 
 sand. 
 
 In the little hotel at Prineville, Fleming and 
 Sid were told they could never get the car over 
 the Cascades, even if they succeeded in climb 
 ing the Muleton range. It was a rare thing for 
 even an emigrant wagon to cross Mount 
 Hood, the usual route being to the Dalles and 
 then down the Columbia by steamboat to 
 Portland. Fleming admitted that it might 
 seem absurd for a car with an eight-inch clear 
 ance to attempt what was difficult for wagons ; 
 but he meant, nevertheless, to have a try at the 
 Barlow Pass. It was impossible for him to 
 find out how far behind him his rival was and, 
 with this uncertainty as to Vannuccini s prog 
 ress, he felt impelled to press on with the least 
 possible loss of time. 
 
 For the last 200 miles they had noticed a 
 change in the weather. The early mornings 
 and nights were beginning to be very cold. A 
 ranchman at whose place they had dinner, 
 after leaving Prineville, told them the sheep 
 men were coming down from the hills and 
 
 244
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 there was every sign of an early snowstorm. 
 He shook his head at the mention of Barlow 
 Pass. 
 
 "You ll never make it with that there out 
 fit," he said, " unless it c n climb trees. And 
 you ll find it ll be standing on its hind legs 
 most of the time when you get into the Warm 
 Spring Hills." 
 
 Fleming was inclined to laugh at this 
 gloomy prophecy; but, late that afternoon, he 
 admitted there was something in the ranch 
 man s remark about the Warm Spring Hills. 
 The country had been growing more and more 
 mountainous from the time they first sighted 
 the snowy peaks of the Three Sisters, an 
 hour after leaving Prineville. At three in 
 the afternoon the trail had become a succes 
 sion of sharp up-grades and sudden descents. 
 At four they found themselves at the bottom 
 of a mountain to which Sid respectfully took 
 off his hat. 
 
 You re the prize winner," he said. " Do 
 you think for a moment this car will take that 
 grade?" he asked Fleming. 
 
 "Maybe not," laughed Fleming; "but it s 
 going to make a bluff at it before it gives 
 up." 
 
 A quarter of the way up the gradometer 
 
 245
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 registered a twenty-two per cent, grade; half 
 way up it had climbed to forty and the engine 
 was slowly but surely giving up the struggle. 
 It seemed inevitable that they would slip back 
 down the mountain. As the car stopped Flem 
 ing speeded up the engine; then, as he threw 
 in his clutch and the Nero jumped forward a 
 few paces, Sid ran after it with a stone to keep 
 it from the backward rush. They had made 
 two-thirds of the distance in this fashion when 
 one of the brake bands snapped. Only the 
 sprags on the rear axles prevented the car 
 from backing down the trail and being dashed 
 to splinters on the rocks below. The grade 
 steepened and further progress was plainly 
 impossible. With the sprags holding the 
 Mountaineer in place, Fleming and Sid at 
 tached their cable to an enormous flat rock at 
 the side of the trail and, thus ballasted and 
 dragging the rock, they backed the car down 
 the hill they had just climbed so laboriously. 
 
 Once safely on the level again, they cast 
 themselves down exhausted, and for the mo 
 ment at the end of their resources. A tumultu 
 ous little stream ran at the foot of the moun 
 tain. The bed of this stream was evidently 
 the only alternative route. Night was coming 
 on and not even Fleming cared to drive the 
 
 246
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 car, possibly for miles, up the bed of an un 
 known stream in the semi-darkness. He re 
 sumed the steering wheel and turned back. In 
 half an hour they had sighted a small ranch, 
 whose owner, a gaunt, sullen-eyed Indian, al 
 lowed them for a dollar to sleep on the hay 
 in his barn, a privilege they shared that night 
 with a skunk a peaceably inclined little ani 
 mal who did not make his presence known 
 until he walked out of the hay next morn 
 ing. 
 
 That forenoon they drove the car a mile up 
 the bed of the stream, until they were able to 
 strike the trail beyond the mountain where they 
 had met their defeat the afternoon before. At 
 one o clock they boiled their coffee at a point 
 in the trail from which they could see a won 
 derful panorama of hills and mountain peaks. 
 They had reached the highest point of the 
 Muleton Mountains; all about them, like the 
 waves of a great sea, were the hills of this 
 range, and, ninety miles to the northwest, the 
 white cap of Mount Hood rose with a mirac 
 ulous effect of light above the drifting 
 clouds. Even the city-bound soul of Sid 
 Johnston was impressed by the beauty of the 
 moment, arid Fleming, as he looked across at 
 the snowy peaks of the Cascades, felt a strong 
 
 247
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 exhilaration rising in him. He knew that be 
 tween those gleaming peaks he was to face the 
 crucial moment of the long, hard road he had 
 traveled. The test of his courage and the test 
 of his faith in himself lay there, in that last 
 gaunt barrier. 
 
 Three hours later they ran into Wapinitia 
 with their brake bands smoking from continu 
 ous coasting down mile after mile of mountain 
 trails. There are three saloons, a boarding- 
 house, and two frame dwellings in Wapinitia, 
 and the first person they met in this outpost of 
 civilization was Hiram D. Albright. 
 
 He stood in front of the boarding-house, 
 and his face, as he greeted them, wore the 
 sheepish smile of the boy who has run away to 
 pay a visit and is rather dubious about his wel 
 come. 
 
 " Came in by stage," he explained. " Betty 
 wanted I should come she got to worrying. 
 People in the hotel at Portland told her no au 
 tomobile could get thrugh the Barlow Pass on 
 account of the big storm a few days ago. I 
 thought I d just hang around for Vannuccini 
 and maybe I d go through with him. Might 
 just as well go back to the railroad in the 
 stage," he added with an attempt at perfect 
 indifference. 
 
 248
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Sid and Fleming looked at each other ap 
 prehensively. It was perfectly plain to them 
 that Betty s father had got bitten by the motor 
 microbe, and it was equally plain that it made 
 little difference to him which car he rode in. 
 He had heard the call of the road and had 
 found it irresistible. 
 
 " But how do you know Vannuccini is tak 
 ing this route?" Fleming hinted. "He may 
 be going over Santiam Pass and, in that case, 
 he would only follow our trail as far as Prine- 
 ville, and then he d branch off to the South." 
 
 Hiram D. was not bothered by this possi 
 bility. "Oh, well," he said easily; "if he 
 doesn t turn up by to-morrow morning, I ll 
 just go along with you. I can t waste any 
 more time fooling around here anyway." 
 
 And Fleming said nothing. It had occurred 
 to him that possibly it might do Betty s father 
 good to face some real difficulties; it would 
 be the best chance in the world to prove to him 
 that the Mountaineer could do what had been 
 claimed for it. The idea had evidently oc 
 curred to Hiram and stirred the spirit of op 
 position in his mind, for he said, with a hint of 
 defiance : 
 
 " They tell me an emigrant wagon came over 
 the pass the other day and had to chop its way 
 
 249
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 through. Don t believe your car can make it 
 anyway. Do you think you d better try it?" 
 
 Fleming stiffened. "Do you want to see 
 me try it, Mr. Albright?" he returned. 
 " We ll leave here at daybreak to-morrow, and 
 there s a seat for you if you want it." 
 
 The older man s face brightened percep 
 tibly. :< Well, I d just as soon," he said, try 
 ing not to look interested. " But I don t be 
 lieve you can make it," he added, to keep him 
 self in countenance. 
 
 " To-morrow night at this time we ll know 
 more about it," Jerry laughed. " In the mean 
 time let s have supper." 
 
 250
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 "^iriHIS time to-morrow night" had 
 come. Undoubtedly they all knew 
 M very much more about it than when 
 they had discussed the route in Wapinitia the 
 night before. For, instead of covering one 
 hundred miles in a day and a half, as Fleming 
 had planned, and gaining the shelter of the 
 Government camp on Mount Hood for the 
 second night, they had made forty miles and 
 now faced a night in the open. 
 
 To add an element of apprehension to the 
 situation there was plainly some sort of storm 
 brewing in the upper air. High up among the 
 great pines and firs there was a sound as of an 
 angry sea ; their tops swayed and tossed before 
 the wind until the whole mountainside seemed 
 tremulous with life. The air had grown sud 
 denly cold with a chill not of the hour after 
 sunset. Fleming remembered what the stage 
 driver had said to him that morning as they 
 were leaving. He had leaned against a post 
 with a cynical smile on his weather-beaten face 
 and scoffed openly at the Easterners as they; 
 stowed away provisions in the tonneau. 
 
 251
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 "You-all will be dropping back into town 
 to-morrow mornin ," he grinned. ;< Why, it d 
 be a right smart trick f er me to drive an outfit 
 over the Pass at this time o the year an I 
 c n drive some, too. The s trees enough across 
 the trail to build a house, an that storm we 
 had a few days ago has brought up water in 
 the woods till what you ll need is a bridge 
 gang to go ahead of you." 
 
 Then he stopped and held up a moistened 
 forefinger to the wind. " The s another storm 
 comin , too. Wind and mebee snow. You 
 take my advice an go down to Portland on 
 the river boats." 
 
 But this was, of course, out of the question 
 for Fleming. He had, indeed, tried at the last 
 minute to persuade Betty s father to go back 
 to Portland by way of the river; but Hiram 
 D. was highly indignant at the insinuation that 
 he could not stand the possible hardships be 
 fore them. He would go on with the car, then, 
 anyway; and the outcome of it was that Flem 
 ing had the additional worry of feeling that he 
 was leading Betty s father into unknown 
 dangers. 
 
 This feeling was most strongly with him as 
 he listened to the rising of the wind and real 
 ized that in half an hour a dark and cold night 
 
 252
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 would be upon them. All that day they had 
 forded creeks, climbed up and down hill, used 
 their windlass and cable to haul themselves 
 out of gulches washed out across the road, and 
 jacked up the car twice to get it over a boulder 
 in the trail. They had exerted every bit of 
 strength and ingenuity they possessed to make 
 the top of the Pass, but in vain. There was 
 nothing for them now but to prepare to camp 
 where they were. 
 
 For himself Jerry would not have minded it 
 if it had been possible to predict what sort of 
 eifect roughing it would have on the health 
 and temper of Betty s father. He had had a 
 sample of Hiram D. Albright in an irascible 
 mood, and he did not care to repeat the experi 
 ment. 
 
 But, curiously enough, Hiram accepted the 
 situation philosophically. Indeed, an almost 
 boyish spirit of adventure seemed to have came 
 to life in the gray-haired business man. He 
 expressed no forebodings as to rheumatism, 
 and he fell to work unloading blankets and 
 cooking utensils as if he had not had twenty 
 years of manual idleness. On account of the 
 high wind they dug a shallow trench for their 
 fire and put the tire irons across it to support 
 the coffee pot. 
 
 253
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " We ll cook the coffee first and then the 
 bacon," Sid directed. 
 
 He was at that moment head and shoulders 
 in the tonneau, but suddenly he emerged with 
 a groan of horror. 
 
 "We ve lost the bacon!" he cried "the 
 whole bloomin chunk!" 
 
 It was a moment before the tragedy of this 
 fact burst upon them, but when they realized 
 it fully, the three of them cast themselves into 
 the tonneau in a despairing search. No use! 
 The bacon had been shaken out somewhere on 
 the rough trail, and with it everything in the 
 food line with the exception of a box of crack 
 ers and small can of ground coffee. It was a 
 depressing discovery. 
 
 They supped lightly on crackers and coffee 
 and the next morning they breakfasted 
 frugally on coffee and crackers. But in the 
 meantime they had passed through such an 
 experience as none of them would ever for 
 get. 
 
 About midnight there burst upon them one 
 of those inexplicable and violent storms which 
 frequently vent their fury upon the Cascades. 
 They were wakened first by a crash of thunder, 
 and almost immediately the rain was upon 
 them a deluge of rain which poured down 
 
 254
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 even through the thick forest as if from a hun 
 dred water spouts. The wind rose and lashed 
 the trees until, in fear of falling branches, the 
 three men crawled under the partial shelter of 
 the car, where they lay, wet and uncomfort 
 able, listening to the pounding of the enor 
 mous hailstones which were coming down with 
 the rain. As the storm increased in violence 
 they could hear, far up the mountainside, the 
 crash of falling trees. The noise was like far- 
 off artillery, terrifying and sleep-dispelling. 
 
 In this manner they spent the rest of the 
 night, most miserably. Sid amused himself by 
 enumerating the things he would like to have 
 for breakfast, until Fleming, goaded by his 
 empty stomach, threatened to pitch him out 
 into the storm if he did not stop. The thought 
 that absorbed Fleming s mind was the ques 
 tion of Vannuccini s whereabouts. If he had 
 gone by Santiam pass had he escaped this 
 storm? While they had been crawling along, 
 sometimes taking hours to make a single mile, 
 what had the Italian car been doing? How 
 far from Portland was it and what would 
 Betty say if the Superba reached its goal first? 
 
 With the first indication of daylight they 
 crawled out and looked about them. The rain 
 had long since ceased, but the havoc of the 
 
 255
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 storm was everywhere. Not twenty rods from 
 their camp a giant fir lay straight across the 
 trail; in all directions brooks and rivulets that 
 had not been there the night before were rush 
 ing down the mountainside. The woods 
 seemed drowned and soaking, pools of water 
 lay where before there had flourished a bed of 
 ferns ; there did not seem to be a dry twig left 
 in the forest. 
 
 They made their coffee over the flames of 
 the blow-torch and got what sustenance they 
 could out of a box of damp crackers, and then 
 they prepared for what was to be the hardest 
 day s work any of them had ever known. 
 
 It did not once occur to Fleming to turn 
 back, though Betty s father declared he was 
 willing to bear witness to the fact that the trail 
 was impossible. 
 
 " Nothing is impossible," Jerry returned, 
 setting his lips in the straight line the older 
 man was beginning to recognize. " We have 
 plenty of gasolene; the car is running well, 
 and I m going on. That s all there is to say." 
 
 That day they made nine miles. 
 
 In the morning it had been a simple matter 
 of sticking to the trail until they reached a 
 camp; at night it had become a struggle for 
 their very lives. For at noon they had made 
 
 256
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 their last meal of crackers, and they had not 
 seen a living thing in the forest. The trail 
 grew with every mile more difficult. It had 
 been at best two faint wheel ruts following a 
 devious way among stumps and fallen trees. 
 After the storm it had become nearly obliter 
 ated; they might almost as easily have driven 
 a motor car through the unopened forest. 
 Beginning that morning with the fir tree which 
 they had chopped in two sections to get the car 
 through, they had hewn their path through the 
 trunks of six trees, which had fallen across the 
 trail, and had built two sections of corduroy 
 road over a slimy swamp. 
 
 When in the middle of the afternoon they 
 stopped with the radiator of the Mountaineer 
 against a pine that stretched its four-foot di 
 ameter across their path, Betty s father was a 
 pathetic sight. He had lost his hat somewhere 
 on the way, and Sid had lent him a cap which 
 looked singularly incongruous on his gray 
 head. He was splashed with mud from head to 
 foot; his hands were bruised and blistered, 
 and one of his bushy eyebrows was inky black 
 from a splash of grease. But curiously enough 
 the spirit of what Sid called " a dead game 
 sport " had been aroused in the millionaire man 
 ufacturer. He had not uttered one complaint ; 
 
 257
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 he had done his share of the work with a sort of 
 grim enthusiasm, and when they seemed at last 
 to have come to a final impasse, he said : 
 
 " Well, Jerry, I guess we can get over that, 
 can t we?" 
 
 There was a note of equality and comrade 
 ship in the old man s tone that Jerry had never 
 heard there before. It gave him exactly the 
 courage he needed just then. He got up from 
 the log where he had thrown himself exhausted 
 and replied cheerfully: 
 
 "Why, of course we can. But it will take 
 six hours to chop through that giant with one 
 ax; we ll just build a runway and drive the car 
 over it." 
 
 It is one thing to build roads over a four- 
 foot obstacle when one has had a good break 
 fast and dinner; but, as Sid said, to do these 
 things when a man is "so everlasting hungry 
 he gets to seeing steaks and hearing dinner 
 bells," is another proposition. By the middle 
 of the afternoon they were desperately hun 
 gry. As they forded a branch of the Salmon 
 River Sid declared he saw a trout. With 
 one accord they climbed out of the car on the 
 bank of the stream and watched Sid with bated 
 breath as he patiently angled for that fish. 
 But it was no use, the Oregon fish were too 
 
 258
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 wily to furnish luncheon for three starving 
 Easterners. They did not respond with as 
 much as a nibble. Sorely disappointed, the 
 three climbed back into their places. Unless 
 a turn of the trail revealed a house or camp 
 within an hour they would have to go supper- 
 less to bed on the ground once more. 
 
 At six o clock it is dark in those cathedral- 
 like forest aisles. They struggled on, each one 
 of them determinedly cheerful, until they were 
 obliged to pause at the edge of a green and 
 slimy swamp. Sid in his hip boots waded in 
 and found the water not more than eight inches 
 deep. But half way across the car stuck in the 
 mud. The cable was unwound and run out to 
 a near-by tree. It broke after half a dozen 
 turns of the handle, was spliced and broke 
 again, repeatedly. The night had settled down 
 upon them by the time they got the car on to 
 firm ground. Too exhausted to make a fire 
 and boil their coffee, they rolled up in blankets, 
 Betty s father in the car, Fleming and Sid on 
 the ground, and fell asleep. 
 
 It seemed to Fleming that he had no more 
 than closed his eyes when he found himself sit 
 ting bolt upright, with a snarling scream ring 
 ing in his ears. Sid also jumped to his feet, 
 visibly scared. He had never heard such a 
 
 259
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 blood-curdling sound in his life, and he was 
 extremely averse to remaining under that par 
 ticular tree any longer. The call or challenge, 
 or whatever it was, had been answered far off 
 in the forest by the weird wail of a panther; 
 and then, as they became accustomed to the 
 darkness about them, they were aware that in 
 the branches of a tree on the other side of the 
 trail a pair of brilliant, fiery eyes were looking 
 down at them. 
 
 After that no persuasion could induce Sid 
 to sleep in the open. In fact, Fleming him 
 self did not relish the thought that the owner 
 of that snarling scream might come dropping 
 down upon him as he slept. They lighted a 
 fire with what half-dry material they could 
 find. Then they rolled two logs parallel to 
 each other, spread their blankets between, 
 threw some smaller logs and saplings over the 
 top, and crawled beneath this shelter. 
 
 When morning dawned the three men looked 
 at each other, and each of them knew that 
 another day of violent exertion without food 
 would leave them at the end of their strength 
 that night. Fleming drew his belt up tighter 
 and a look of grim stubbornness came into his 
 face. 
 
 " We can t be far below the timber line," he 
 260
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 said : " I don t believe the Government camp is 
 more than twenty miles away. Things can t 
 get any worse, that s certain, and well, I m 
 going to stick to the car, anyway." 
 
 Another day of hunger and endless struggle 
 seemed before them ; but early in the forenoon 
 they came with startling unexpectedness upon 
 a small clearing, and in the midst of it was a 
 house. With a shout of joy Fleming and Sid 
 ran toward it and then stopped, for the place 
 was absolutely deserted. The gray and 
 weather-stained door sagged open on its 
 hinges; rank weeds grew high about the rot 
 ting doorstep. It was a thoroughly depress 
 ing sight; but hope died hard in their hearts. 
 Even Mr. Albright joined them in a search 
 from attic to cellar of the dismal place. 
 
 But they could find nothing eatable. Their 
 examination of the house proved to them that 
 it must have been abandoned several years be 
 fore. Mournfully they filed out into the grass- 
 grown dooryard and silently they were prepar 
 ing to get under way again, when there came 
 to their ears a curious sound. It was faint, 
 far off, but perfectly definite, and each of 
 them knew at once it was the noise a power 
 ful automobile makes when its muffler is off. 
 
 The three men looked at each other without 
 
 261
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 a word. In Fleming s eyes for the first time 
 since he had undertaken the conquest of the 
 Pass, there was the shadow of discouragement. 
 He knew as well as the others that it was Van- 
 nuccini behind them, and he realized with bitter 
 chagrin that in the last two days he had been 
 literally building a trail for his rival. The 
 same thought seemed to have occurred to the 
 others, for Sid said with a rueful grin: 
 
 " He don t have to stop to chop down no 
 trees or build corduroy roads. Just listen to 
 that exhaust! They re coming along at a fair 
 jog, they are!" 
 
 "Well, I hope nis provisions haven t given 
 out," said Fleming, quietly: but in his inmost 
 heart he was telling himself that he would hold 
 the trail if he had to stand guard over it with 
 his six-shooter. 
 
 But there was no need for desperate meas 
 ures the Italian had not the slightest desire 
 or intention to take the lead. He overtook 
 them as they were clearing a stump from the 
 trail, and he amiably placed his grub box at 
 their disposal when he learned their plight; but 
 he made it perfectly clear that he preferred the 
 rear of that procession. 
 
 Till we get to good roads," said Sid aside 
 to Fleming. 
 
 262
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " If he takes the rear now he s got to keep 
 it," Fleming returned grimly. 
 
 Vannuccini told them he had left Wapinitia 
 the day before. He had profited by their 
 labors to the extent of making fifty miles to 
 their ten. It was a galling fact for the road 
 builders to swallow, but they consoled them 
 selves with the immediate blessings of some 
 thing to eat. It was a meal sadly dispropor- 
 tioned to their appetites, for Vannuccini s grub 
 box was but scantily furnished. 
 
 " I could eat that much all over again," Sid 
 remarked, as Fleming made him put back part 
 of the provisions for another meal. 
 
 "We don t know how long we ll have to 
 make it last," Fleming said. 
 
 But even this scanty lunch put new life into 
 them all. Jerry had been doing some thinking 
 as he ate, and as the rest of them climbed back 
 to their places in the two cars, he turned 
 politely to Vannuccini. 
 
 "Perhaps you would like to go ahead? " he 
 said. 
 
 "My dear Fleming, not at all! After 
 you!" the Italian replied with a smile which 
 conveyed a variety of meanings. 
 
 And "after you" was the keynote of his 
 attitude the rest of the day. 
 
 263
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 It seemed incredible, but before afternoon 
 one fact had dawned upon them all Vannuc- 
 cini did not intend to work. 
 
 Fleming had naturally assumed that in the 
 matter of tree-chopping the crews of the two 
 cars would alternate. But he was speedily 
 assured of the futility of expecting help from 
 his rival. Vannuccini was quite willing his 
 mechanic should chop trees; but when Jarvis 
 paused to rest and it was hinted that his em 
 ployer might take his place, the Italian stared 
 as if astonished at the mere idea. He said, 
 quite amiably, that he had never wielded an 
 ax and he did not intend to learn. Then he 
 climbed into his car, where he sat rolling ciga 
 rettes and gazing urbanely upon the toiling, 
 sweating quartette as they removed a six- 
 foot section from the trunk of a giant fir 
 stretched across the trail. 
 
 Well, say ain t he got an armor-plated 
 nerve?" Sid asked his fellow workers, but he 
 received no response. 
 
 Jarvis looked as if he could a tale unfold, 
 but was restrained by the etiquette of the 
 driver and mechanic; Fleming shut his mouth 
 tightly and chopped away; and into the face 
 of Betty s father there came a look of anger 
 repressed to the apoplectic point. 
 
 264
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 But Hiram said nothing until they had 
 worked along to where a slimy pool stretched 
 across the trail and as far as they could see 
 into the woods on either side. 
 
 Fleming had already had too much experi 
 ence with the sticky mud at the bottom of such 
 pools to try to drive the car through it. There 
 was only one thing to do, they must build a 
 corduroy road of saplings and such small 
 logs as they could roll into the mud hole. That 
 meant two hours of back-breaking work. 
 
 Hiram looked at Vannuccini, who had 
 stopped his car at a discreet distance. 
 
 " Say! " he called, trying to make his voice 
 as matter-of-fact as possible, " we ve got to 
 corduroy this bit. Get out, will you, and help 
 Jarvis with those saplings." 
 
 Possibly the menacing eye of Hiram D. Al 
 bright conveyed more meaning than his words. 
 At any rate, Vannuccini descended from his 
 seat. He laid hold of one end of a stout sap 
 ling Jarvis had chopped down, dragged it 
 to the pool, looked apprehensively at his hands, 
 and then walked back to the car, settled him 
 self comfortably and went to sleep. 
 
 Hiram stared for an enraged minute at 
 the placid figure, and then drew Jarvis one 
 side. 
 
 265
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " Say, has he done any work on this trip? " 
 he asked. 
 
 Jarvis looked at his master with unconcealed 
 dislike. "It s like this, Mr. Albright. He 
 can work like a devil if he has to, but he ll 
 never do one stroke if he can make somebody 
 else do it for him see? He s the smartest 
 proposition and the most ornery one I ever 
 run up against. That s giving it to you 
 straight, sir." 
 
 Hiram looked long and thoughtfully at the 
 slumbering Italian, then he said : 
 
 " Jerry, I want you to beat that cusjs." 
 
 It would have given Jerry keen satisfaction 
 to know that at last Betty s father wanted him 
 to win but for the apparent hopelessness of 
 the situation. He knew as well as if he had 
 already seen the close of their long struggle 
 across the continent that Vannuccini would 
 beat him on the good roads between Salmon 
 and Portland. The moment they got over the 
 Pass if they ever did the Italian would take 
 the road ahead, and he, Jerry, would enter 
 Portland as far behind as there was difference 
 in their horse-power. 
 
 Fleming knew he w r as using all his strength 
 merely to see the other car take the lead when 
 he had hewn and built a road for it out of the 
 
 266
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 forest. And under the circumstances he was 
 powerless to change the situation. Luck had 
 caught him in a trap from which there was no 
 way out. 
 
 As he realized the situation fully, many des 
 perate thoughts came into his mind. Whether 
 he lost or won the race he had no doubt of 
 Betty s attitude, and he was certain Vannuc- 
 cini must know by this time that his hopes in 
 that direction were in vain ; but Fleming knew 
 now that he had to do with an unscrupulous 
 and skillful adversary. He was face to face 
 with the loss of every cent he possessed and a 
 more important loss of prestige for his car. 
 
 All during the rest of that toilsome after 
 noon his thoughts played with distracting anx 
 iety around the one problem: How could he 
 outwit the man behind him? For hours Van- 
 nuccini managed to keep just at their heels 
 when there was a bit of straightaway driving, 
 and contrived to be half a mile behind when 
 the trail had to be cleared of some obstruction. 
 Fleming found himself wondering savagely 
 how much longer it would be before he lost 
 control of himself; he said to himself that after 
 he had cleared the way once more he was going 
 to stand up in his car and plug away at Van- 
 nuccini s front tires with his six-shooter. 
 
 267
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 It was some consolation to him that night 
 was coming on. If they had to camp again 
 that night Vannuccini would at least know 
 what it was to go without breakfast and per 
 haps without dinner and supper. 
 
 "Lord! will we ever get out of these 
 woods?" he groaned aloud as the gleam of 
 water through low branches told him they had 
 come to another swamp. 
 
 In the forest depths a somber twilight had 
 already gathered. If they were to get across 
 the swamp before dark they must work rap 
 idly. Fleming and Sid waded through the 
 sedgy outskirts until they reached the center of 
 the swamp, which the recent storm had turned 
 to a pool of unknown depth. 
 
 : There isn t more than six inches of water," 
 said Sid, who had gone ahead with a stick; 
 " but the bottom is soft and most as sticky as 
 that buffalo wallow we broke into back in Ne 
 braska. It will need a good heavy corduroy 
 for both cars, won t it?" 
 
 Fleming suddenly threw back his head and 
 laughed. At the words a great idea, a heaven 
 sent idea, had come to him. He took his little 
 red-haired mechanic by the arm and said 
 something in his ear. For an instant Sid 
 stared; then a howl of joy broke from him. 
 
 268
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 He cast both arms around Fleming and like 
 a couple of boys they pounded each other on 
 the back and laughed until the woods rang. 
 It was truly a droll idea that Fleming had 
 got. 
 
 " Remember, nothing heavier than branches 
 and brush!" he cautioned Sid, "and be ready 
 to push if I need you." 
 
 Sid went on with the road-building, while 
 Fleming carefully adjusted his Weed tire 
 chains. "I don t want to make any mistake 
 in this dash for the pole," he grinned at Sid. 
 Then he set Hiram to work unloading every 
 thing that could possibly be carried, to lighten 
 the car. Betty s father looked puzzled. He 
 remarked that it seemed to him they were build 
 ing a pretty light road. 
 
 " It s heavy enough for us! " Jerry laughed. 
 "Now, then, both of you get out of the way; 
 I want plenty of room for this trip." 
 
 He backed the car a little to get a running 
 start. Then he speeded up the engine, threw 
 in the clutch and the next minute in one grand 
 splashing spurt the little car had thrashed its 
 way into the center of the swamp, where for 
 an instant it faltered. 
 
 " Now, then, push for your life, Sid ! " 
 Fleming called. 
 
 269
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 Sid dashed to the rescue and Hiram fol 
 lowed, inspired by a swift understanding of 
 this maneuver. With their united shoulders 
 to the back of the lightened car they gave one 
 tremendous push which carried it over the dan 
 ger-spot before the light brush corduroy gave 
 way under the weight of the machine. 
 
 ; Wait till the big Superba hits that soft 
 spot," said Sid. 
 
 They had just finished reloading when Van- 
 nuccini drove his car to the edge of the swamp. 
 With entire faith that he could do what from 
 a distance he had just seen Fleming do, he 
 drove cautiously through the outskirts of the 
 swamp and onto the precarious brush road 
 Fleming and Sid had built. 
 
 Half way across, without an instant s warn 
 ing, the big car with two-thirds of its weight 
 in front, sank until the two front wheels had 
 totally disappeared. The road that had been 
 built for a fifteen hundred pound car had 
 given way under the four thousand pounds of 
 the Superba, and in two minutes it was as 
 firmly lodged in the sticky clay of the swamp 
 as if it had been one of the native pines. In 
 every sense of the word the bottom had 
 dropped out of things for Signor Vannuc- 
 cini! 
 
 270
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 A GLORIOUS afternoon; a magnifi 
 cent stretch of macadam road, with 
 two automobiles following a battered 
 blue car and Portland just in sight. 
 
 " Betty," Fleming said, " will you pinch me, 
 please? I can t believe I m awake. To think 
 that I am here, and you are there, and in ten 
 minutes we ll pass the city limits. How in the 
 world did you ever think of coming out to 
 meet me, Betty?" 
 
 Why, because I couldn t help but come. 
 I d have come if I d had to hire a delivery 
 wagon. When you telephoned in from Salmon 
 this noon that you were within forty miles, 
 I told Mrs. Graham I had to meet you or die ! 
 She has the fastest car in Portland, and five 
 minutes after your phone message we were 
 whizzing out here! You know, w r hen father 
 declared he was going back to Wapinitia to 
 meet you I w r ent to stay with Mrs. Graham. 
 I think Dad thought I might come tagging 
 after him if he left me at the hotel! And 
 when I saw him coming in with you, I was 
 
 271
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 speechless. Why, he never told me he was 
 going to come on with you. He said some 
 thing about lumber interests, and then the 
 first thing I knew he was off. Is he do you 
 think he has forgiven you, Jerry?" 
 
 In view of the last two days events, her 
 anxious tone both amused and touched him. 
 
 " Dear little girl," he said; " your father and 
 I understand each other now. We re going to 
 be regular pals from this time on. Read that, 
 Betty." 
 
 He passed over to her a telegram which was 
 signed by his partners, Walters and Cushman. 
 It ran: 
 
 " Congratulations. Win or lose, your trip 
 has sold more cars than we can build in a year. 
 Hurry back and help us fill orders. Entire 
 country talking your trip and our car." 
 
 " Our local agent met me in Salmon and 
 gave it to me," Fleming explained, " and I 
 couldn t resist showing it to your father. What 
 do you suppose he said, Betty? " 
 
 " Offered you a partnership?" 
 
 " Right ; that s just what he did, but there s 
 more than that. I thanked him and then I said 
 as solemn as an owl: I m afraid it s out of 
 
 272
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 the question, sir. I couldn t give up my model, 
 for, you see, I m perfectly satisfied with this 
 car. And the old gentleman looked up at me 
 with a twinkle in his eyes. * What s that? 
 What s that? he said; Who said anything 
 about giving up this model? Perfectly sat 
 isfied with it, myself. Ought to be made in a 
 big factory like mine the American car for 
 American roads. 
 
 Betty laughed aloud. "Why, they re your 
 very words ! I d like to know what you ve done 
 to Dad. But first of all, I want to know what 
 you ve done to Vannuccini." 
 
 A broad smile began to spread over Jerry s 
 face. 
 
 " I saw him last," he said, " at seven o clock 
 this morning. He was footing it off into the 
 backwoods with a pair of whiffle-trees over his 
 shoulders, while Jarvis drove a team of horses 
 intended to be used in dragging the proud 
 Superba out of a mud hole." 
 
 Betty s eyes were of a saucer-like roundness 
 with curiosity. " How did he get into a mud 
 hole? Where is he now? When did he oh, 
 begin at the beginning and tell it all! " 
 
 There was not time to tell it all, then and 
 there. But Jerry hastily sketched for her their 
 three days struggle over Mount Hood. He 
 
 273
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 told of that last bit of road-building, which 
 had proved Vannuccini s undoing, and of their 
 being obliged to take the two men on with 
 them, when it was found the Superba could 
 not possibly be extricated without horses. 
 
 " Couldn t leave them there in the woods, 
 when we didn t know how far from help we 
 were," he said. " So they got in. We d made 
 perhaps six miles and were resigning ourselves 
 to camping for the night, when we heard a 
 dog bark. Betty, I don t believe anything 
 will ever give me the wild and hilarious joy 
 I felt when I heard that dog. Sid said, any 
 way, if there wasn t a house we could eat the 
 dog. We crawled up the trail a mile farther, 
 and there was the Government camp. You 
 can t imagine how queer it is to wander for 
 three days through the wilderness and then 
 come out suddenly upon a neat, prosperous 
 little white house, with green blinds and posy 
 beds!" 
 
 But the people must have been as sur 
 prised as you were! " Betty exclaimed. 
 
 " Surprised! If we had dropped from the 
 clouds they couldn t have been more aston 
 ished. They wouldn t believe we had made the 
 pass in the car till we had proved it by describ 
 ing the trail. And then Mrs. Yoakuin cooked 
 
 274
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 us a supper that none of us will forget right 
 away. Betty, I wish you could have seen your 
 father eat! We had to forcibly restrain him 
 from the biscuit and honey. Think of bis 
 cuit and honey after three days of coffee and 
 nothing else in particular ! We ate until it was 
 a physical impossibility to eat any more, and 
 then we sat and looked at the food that was 
 left on the table. Before we went to bed we 
 ate again, and next morning well, you ask 
 your father how many buckwheat cakes he 
 caused to vanish ! " 
 
 "And the Signor was his appetite good? 
 Do you think he realized he was beaten then? " 
 
 " Oh, he knew it was all up with him when 
 Yoakum refused to let his team go till morn 
 ing. He was wild. I think he would have 
 gone back to the car and worked in the dark 
 if he could have got a team. But even Jarvis 
 went back on him. He told Vannuccini it 
 was his own fault that the car was stuck, and 
 the Italian got into a rare old rage. You see, 
 Betty, it was a tough situation for him. He 
 had lost the race, and lost it through his own 
 laziness, and he knew that we all knew it. He 
 isn t a fool, and he is no incompetent. Even 
 Jarvis admitted that he could work like a de 
 mon, if he had to, but 
 
 273
 
 THE CAR AND THE LADY 
 
 " There," said Betty, " we ve had enough 
 Vannuccini. He s out of our lives now, and 
 we ll forget him. Oh, look! There s the city 
 limit post. Stop the car and let the others 
 catch up. I d like the whole world to know 
 you ve won ! " 
 
 They stood up in the car and turned their 
 backs to the setting sun, as they waited for 
 the two cars with Mrs. Graham and Betty s 
 father, Sid and Fleming s local agent with his 
 friends to overtake them. As their hands met, 
 there was a light in their two faces which was 
 not of the sun. 
 
 " Have I made good, Betty? " he asked her 
 softly. 
 
 She only nodded; but in her eyes there was 
 a glorious look of pride and happiness and 
 belief. 
 
 THE END 
 
 276
 
 
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