The Broken Motor-car.
Out where the trail from Kenmore intersects the one leading from Laurel to
and through King's Highway, I passed over a little hill and came suddenly
upon a big, dark-gray touring-car stalled in the road. In it Beryl King
sat looking intently down at her toes. I nearly fell off my horse at the
shock of it, and then my blood got to acting funny, so that my head felt
queer. Then I came to, and rode boldly up to her, mentally shaking hands
with myself over my good luck. For it was good luck just to see her,
whether anything came of it or not.
"Something wrong with the wheelbarrow?" I asked her, with a placid
superiority.
She looked up with a little start--she never did seem to feel my presence
until I spoke to her--and frowned prettily; but whether at me or at the
car, I didn't know.
"I guess something must be," she answered quite meekly, for her. "It keeps
making the funniest buzz when I start it--and it's Mr. Weaver's car, and
he doesn't know--I--I borrowed it without asking, and--"
"That car is all right," I bluffed from my saddle. "It's simply obeying
instructions. It comes under the jurisdiction of my private Providence,
you see. I ordered it that you should be here, and in distress, and
grateful for my helping hand." How was that for straight nerve?
"Well, then, let's have the helping hand and be done. I should be at home,
by now. They will wonder--I just went for a--a little spin, and when
I turned to go back, it started that funny noise. I--I'm afraid of it.
It--might blow up, or--or something."
She seemed in a strangely explanatory mood, that was, to say the least,
suspicious. Either she had come out purposely to torment me, or she was
afraid of what she knew was in my mind, and wanted to make me forget it.
But my mettle was up for good. I had no notion of forgetting, or of
letting her.
"I'll do what I can, and willingly," I told her coolly. "It looks like a
good car--an accommodating car. I hope you are prepared to pay the
penalty--"
"Penalty?" she interrupted, and opened her eyes at me innocently; a bit
_too_ innocently, I may say.
"Penalty; yes. The penalty of letting me find you outside of King's
Highway, _alone_," I explained brazenly.
She tried a lever hurriedly, and the car growled up at her so that she
quit. Then she pulled herself together and faced me nonchalantly.
"Oh-h. You mean about the black velvet mask? I'm afraid--I had forgotten
that funny little--joke." With all she could do, her face and her tone
were not convincing.
I gathered courage as she lost it. "I see that I must demonstrate to you
the fact that I am not altogether a joke," I said grimly, and got down
from my horse.
I don't, to this day, know what she imagined I was going to do. She sat
very still; the kind of stillness a rabbit adopts when he hopes to escape
the notice of an enemy. I could see that she hardly breathed, even.
But when I reached her, I only got a wrench out of the tool-box and yanked
open the hood to see what ailed the motor. I knew something of that make
of car; in fact, I had owned one before I got the _Yellow Peril_, and
I had a suspicion that there wasn't much wrong; a loosened nut will
sometimes sound a good deal more serious than it really is. Still, a
half-formed idea--a perfectly crazy idea--made me go over the whole
machine very carefully to make sure she was all right.
When I was through I stood up and found that she was regarding me
curiously, yet with some amusement. She seemed to feel herself mistress of
the situation, and to consider me as an interesting plaything. I didn't
approve that attitude.
"At all events," she said when she met my eyes, and speaking as if there
had been no break in our conversation, "you are rather a _good_ joke.
Thank you so much."
I put away the wrench, fastened the lid of the tool-box, and then I faced
her grimly. "I see mere words are wasted on you," I said. "I shall have to
carry you off--Beryl King; I _shall_ carry you off if you look at me that
way again!"
She did look that way, only more so. I wonder what she thought a man was
made of, to stand it. I set my teeth hard together.
"Have you got the--er--the black velvet mask?" she taunted, leaning just
the least bit toward me. Her eyes--I say it deliberately--were a direct
challenge that no man could refuse to accept and feel himself a man after.
"Mask or no mask--you'll see!" I turned away to where my horse was
standing eying the car with extreme disfavor, picked up the reins, and
glanced over my shoulder; I didn't know but she would give me the slip.
She was sitting very straight, with both hands on the wheel and her eyes
looking straight before her. She might have been posing for a photograph,
from the look of her. I tied the reins with a quick twist over the
saddle-horn and gave him a slap on the rump. I knew he would go straight
home. Then I went back and stepped into the car just as she reached down
and started the motor. If she had meant to run away from me she had been
just a second too late. She gave me a sidelong, measuring glance, and
gasped. The car slid easily along the trail as if it were listening for
what we were going to say.
"I shall drive," I announced quietly, taking her hands gently from the
wheel. She moved over to make room mechanically, as if she didn't in the
least understand this new move of mine. I know she never dreamed of what
was really in my heart to do.
"You will drive--where?" her voice was politely freezing.
"To find that preacher, of course," I answered, trying to sound surprised
that she should ask, I sent the speed up a notch.
"You--you never would _dare_!" she cried breathlessly, and a little
anxiously.
"The deuce I wouldn't!" I retorted, and laughed in the face of her. It was
queer, but my thoughts went back, for just a flash, to the time Barney had
dared me to drive the _Yellow Peril_ up past the Cliff House to Sutro
Baths. I had the same heady elation of daredeviltry. I wouldn't have
turned back, then, even if I hadn't cared so much for her.
She didn't say anything more, and I sent the car ahead at a pace that
almost matched the mood I was in, and that brought White Divide sprinting
up to meet us. The trail was good, and the car was a dandy. I was making
straight for King's Highway as the best and only chance of carrying out my
foolhardy design. I doubt if any bold, bad knight of old ever had the
effrontery to carry his lady-love straight past her own door in broad
daylight.
Yet it was the safest thing I could do. I meant to get to Osage, and the
only practicable route for a car lay through the pass. To be sure, there
was a preacher at Kenmore; but with the chance of old King being there
also and interrupting the ceremony--supposing I brought matters
successfully that far--with a shot or two, did not in the least appeal to
me. I had made sure that there was plenty of gasoline aboard, so I drove
her right along.
"I hope your father isn't home," I remarked truthfully when we were
slipping into the wide jaws of the pass.
"He is, though; and so is Mr. Weaver. I think you had better jump out here
and run home, or it is not a velvet mask you will need, but a mantle of
invisibility." I couldn't make much of her tone, but her words implied
that even yet she would not take me seriously.
"Well, I've neither mask nor mantle," I said, "But the way I can fade down
the pass will, I think, be a fair substitute for both."
She said nothing whatever to that, but she began to seem interested in the
affair--as she had need to be. She might have jumped out and escaped
while I was down opening the gate--but she didn't. She sat quite still,
as if we were only out on a commonplace little jaunt. I wondered if she
didn't have the spirit of adventure in her make-up, also. Girls do,
sometimes. When I had got in again, I turned to her, remembering
something.
"Gadzooks, madam! I command you not to scream," I quoted sternly.
At that, for the first time in our acquaintance, she laughed; such a
delicious, rollicky little laugh that I felt ready, at the sound, to face
a dozen fathers and they all old Kings.
As we came chugging up to the house, several faces appeared in the doorway
as if to welcome and scold the runaway. I saw old King with his pipe in
his mouth; and there were Aunt Lodema and Weaver. They were all smiling at
the escapade--Beryl's escapade, that is--and I don't think they realized
just at first who I was, or that I was in any sense a menace to their
peace of mind.
When we came opposite and showed no disposition to stop, or even to slow
up, I saw the smiles freeze to amazement, and then--but I hadn't the time
to look. Old King yelled something, but by that time we were skidding
around the first shed, where Shylock had been shot down on my last trip
through there. It was a new shed, I observed mechanically as we went by.
I heard much shouting as we disappeared, but by that time we were almost
through the gantlet. I made the last turn on two wheels, and scudded away
up the open trail of the pass.