THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE HILLSIDE ROAD
So unexpectedly, so genially, that Claire wondered if he realized what
was happening, Milt chuckled to the tough on the running-board, as the
two cars ran side by side, "Bound for some place, brother?"
The unwelcome guest looked puzzled. For the first time his china eyes
ceased twinkling; and he answered dubiously: "Just gettin' a lift." He
sped up the car with the hand-throttle. Milt accelerated equally.
Claire roused; wanted to shout. She was palsied afraid that Milt would
leave them. The last time she had seen him, she had suggested that
leaving them would be a favor.
Her guest growled at her--the words coming through a slit at the corner
of his rowdy mouth, "Sit still, or I'll run you over."
Milt innocently babbled on, "Better come ride with me, bo'. More room in
this-here handsome coupelet."
Then was the rough relieved in his uneasy tender little heart, and his
eyes flickered again as he shouted back, not looking at Milt, "Thanks,
bub, I'll stick by me friends."
"Oh no; can't lose pleasure of your company. I like your looks. You're a
bloomin' little island way off on the dim silver skyline." Claire
knitted her brows. She had not seen Milt's rhetoric. "You're an island
of Hesperyds or Hesperides. Accent on the bezuzus. Oh, yes, moondream, I
think you better come. Haven't decided"--Milt's tone was bland--"whether
to kill you or just have you pinched. Miss Boltwood! Switch off your
power!"
"If she does," the tough shouted, "I'll run 'em off the bank."
"No, you won't, sweetheart, 'cause why? 'Cause what'll I do to you
afterwards?"
"You won't do nothin', Jack, 'cause I'd gouge your eyes out."
"Why, lovesoul, d' you suppose I'd be talking up as brash as this to a
bid, stwong man like oo if I didn't have a gun handy?"
"Yuh, I guess so, lil sunbeam. And before you could shoot, I'd crowd
your tin liz into the bank, and jam right into it! I may get killed, but
you won't even be a grease-spot!"
He was turning the Gomez from its straight course, forcing Milt's bug
toward the high bank of earth which walled in the road on the left.
While Claire was very sick with fear, then more sick with contempt, Milt
squealed, "You win!" And he had dropped back. The Gomez was going on
alone.
There was only one thing more for Claire--to jump. And that meant death.
The tough was storming, "Your friend's a crack shot--with his mouth!"
The thin pit-pit-pit was coming again. She looked back. She saw Milt's
bug snap forward so fast that on a bump its light wheels were in the
air. She saw Milt standing on the right side of the bug holding the
wheel with one hand, and the other hand--firm, grim, broad-knuckled
hand--outstretched toward the tough, then snatching at his collar.
The tough's grip was torn from the steering wheel. He was yanked from
the running-board. He crunched down on the road.
She seized the wheel. She drove on at sixty miles an hour. She had gone
a good mile before she got control of her fear and halted. She saw Milt
turn his little car as though it were a prancing bronco. It seemed to
paw the air with its front wheels. He shot back, pursuing the late
guest. The man ran bobbing along the road. At this distance he was no
longer formidable, but a comic, jerking, rabbity figure, humping himself
over the back track.
As the bug whirled down on him, the tough was to be seen throwing up his
hands, leaping from the high bank.
Milt turned again and came toward them, but slowly; and after he had
drawn up even and switched off the engine, he snatched off his violent
plaid cap and looked apologetic.
"Sorry I had to kid him along. I was afraid he really would drive you
off the bank. He was a bad actor. And he was right; he could have licked
me. Thought maybe I could jolly him into getting off, and have him
pinched, next town."
"But you had a gun--a revolver--didn't you, lad?" panted Mr. Boltwood.
"Um, wellllll---- I've got a shotgun. It wouldn't take me more 'n five
or ten minutes to dig it out, and put it together. And there's some
shells. They may be all right. Haven't looked at 'em since last fall.
They didn't get so awful damp then."
"But suppose he'd had a revolver himself?" wailed Claire.
"Gee, you know, I thought he probably did have one. I was scared blue. I
had a wrench to throw at him though," confided Milt.
"How did you know we needed you?"
"Why back there, couple miles behind you, maybe I saw your father get up
and try to wrestle him, so I suspected there was kind of a disagreement.
Say, Miss Boltwood, you know when you spoke to me--way back there--I
hadn't meant to butt in. Honest. I thought maybe as we were going----"
"Oh, I know!"
"--the same way, you wouldn't mind my trailing, if I didn't sit in too
often; and I thought maybe I could help you if----"
"Oh, I know! I'm so ashamed! So bitterly ashamed! I just meant---- Will
you forgive me? You were so good, taking care of us----"
"Oh, sure, that's all right!"
"I fancy you do know how grateful father and I are that you were behind
us, this time! Wasn't it a lucky accident that we'd slipped past you
some place!"
"Yes," dryly, "quite an accident. Well, I'll skip on ahead again. May
run into you again before we hit Seattle. Going to take the run through
Yellowstone Park?"
"Yes, but----" began Claire. Her father interrupted:
"Uh, Mr., uh--Daggett, was it?--I wonder if you won't stay a little
closer to us hereafter? I was getting rather a good change out of the
trip, but I'm afraid that now---- If it wouldn't be an insult, I'd beg
you to consider staying with us for a consideration, uh, you know,
remuneration, and you could----"
"Thanks, uh, thank you, sir, but I wouldn't like to do it. You see, it's
kind of my vacation. If I've done anything I'm tickled----"
"But perhaps," Mr. Boltwood ardently begged the young man recently so
abysmally unimportant, "perhaps you would consent to being my guest,
when you cared to--say at hotels in the Park."
"'Fraid I couldn't. I'm kind of a lone wolf."
"Please! Pretty please!" besought Claire. Her smile was appealing, her
eyes on his.
Milt bit his knuckles. He looked weak. But he persisted, "No, you'll get
over this scrap with our friend. By the way, I'll put the deputy onto
him, in the next town. He'll never get out of the county. When you
forget him---- Oh no, you can go on fine. You're a good steady driver,
and the road's perfectly safe--if you give people the once-over before
you pick 'em up. Picking up badmen is no more dangerous here than it
would be in New York. Fact, there's lot more hold-ups in any city than
in the wildest country. I don't think you showed such awfully good taste
in asking Terrible Tim, the two-gun man, right into the parlor. Gee,
please don't do it again! Please!"
"No," meekly. "I was an idiot. I'll be good, next time. But won't you
stay somewhere near us?"
"I'd like to, but I got to chase on. Don't want to wear out the welcome
on the doormat, and I'm due in Seattle, and---- Say, Miss Boltwood." He
swung out of the bug, cranked up, climbed back, went awkwardly on, "I
read those books you gave me. They're slick--mean to say, interesting.
Where that young fellow in _Youth's Encounter_ wanted to be a bishop and
a soldier and everything---- Just like me, except Schoenstrom is
different, from London, some ways! I always wanted to be a brakie, and
then a yeggman. But I wasn't bright enough for either. I just became a
garage man. And I---- Some day I'm going to stop using slang. But it'll
take an operation!"
He was streaking down the road, and Claire was sobbing, "Oh, the lamb,
the darling thing! Fretting about his slang, when he wasn't afraid in
that horrible nightmare. If we could just do something for him!"
"Don't you worry about him, dolly. He's a very energetic chap. And----
Uh---- Mightn't we drive on a little farther, perhaps? I confess that
the thought of our recent guest still in this vicinity----"
"Yes, and---- Oh, I'm shameless. If Mohammed Milton won't stay with our
car mountain, we're going to tag after him."
But when she reached the next hill, with its far shining outlook, there
was no Milt and no Teal bug on the road ahead.