THE BLACK DAY OF THE VOYAGE
That was the one black day of her voyage--black stippled with crimson.
It began with the bear's invasion of the car, resulting in long
claw-marks across the upholstery, the loss of some particularly good
candy bought at a Park hotel, and genuine grief abiding after the
sentimental tragedy of Vere de Vere's death. The next act was the
ingenious loss of all power of her engine. She forgot that, before
breakfast, Milt had filled the oil-well for her. When she stopped for
gasoline, and the seller inquired, "Quart of oil?"--she absently nodded.
So the cylinders filled with surplus oil, the spark-plugs were fouled,
and the engine had the power of a sewing machine.
She could not make Mount Washburn--she could not make even the slopes of
the lower road. Now she knew the agony of the feeble car in the
mountains--most shameful and anxious of a driver's dolors: the brisk
start up the hill, the belief that you will keep on going this time; the
feeling of weariness through all the car; the mad shifting of gears, the
slipping of the clutch, and more gas, and less gas, and wondering
whether more gas or less is the better, and the appalling knocking when
you finally give her a lot too much gas; the remembrance, when it's too
late, to retard the spark; the safe crawling up to the last sharp pitch,
just fifteen feet from the summit; the car's halting; the yelp at your
passenger, "Jump out and push!"; the painful next five feet; and the
final death of the power just as the front wheels creep up over the
pitch. Then the anxious putting on of brakes--holding the car with both
foot-brake and emergency, lest it run down backward, slip off the road.
The calf of your leg begins to ache from the pressure on the foot-brake,
and with an unsuccessful effort to be courteous you bellow at the
passenger, who has been standing beside the car looking deprecatory,
"Will you please block the back wheels with a stone--hustle up, will
you!"
All this routine Claire thoroughly learned. Always Milt bumbled up, said
cheerful things, and either hauled the Gomez over the pitch by a towline
to his bug, or getting out, pushing on a rear fender till his neck was
red and bulgy, gave the extra impetus necessary to get the Gomez over.
"Would you mind shoving on that side, just a little bit?" he suggested
to Mr. Boltwood, who ceased the elaborate smoking of cigars, dusted his
hands, and gravely obeyed, while Claire was awaiting the new captain's
command to throw on the power.
"I wish we weren't under so much obligation to this young man," said Mr.
Boltwood, after one crisis.
"I know but--what can we do?"
"Don't you suppose we might pay him?"
"Henry B. Boltwood, if you tried to do that---- I'm not sure. Your being
my parent might save you, but even so, I think he'd probably chase you
off the road, clear down into that chasm."
"I suppose so. Shall we have to entertain him in Seattle?"
"Have to? My dear parent, you can't keep me from it! Any of the Seattle
friends of Gene Gilson who don't appreciate that straight, fine,
aspiring boy may go---- Not overdo it, you understand. But---- Oh, take
him to the theater. By the way; shall we try to climb Mount Rainier
before----"
"See here, my good dolly; you stop steering me away from my feeble
parental efforts. Do you wish to be under obligations----"
"Don't mind, with Milt. He wouldn't charge interest, as Jeff Saxton
would. Milt is, oh, he's folks!"
"Quite true. But are we? Are you?"
"Learning to be!"
Between discussions and not making hills, Claire cleaned the spark plugs
as they accumulated carbon from the surplus oil--or she pretended to
help Milt clean them. The plugs were always very hot, and when you were
unscrewing the jacket from the core, you always burned your hand, and
wished you could swear ... and sometimes you could.
After noon, when they had left the Park and entered Gardiner, Milt
announced, "I've got to stick around a while. The key in my
steering-gear seems to be worn. May have to put in a new one. Get the
stuff at a garage here. If you wouldn't mind waiting, be awful glad to
tag, and try to give a few helping hands till the oil cleans itself
out."
"I'll just stroll on," she said, but she drove away as swiftly as she
could. Her father's worry about obligations disturbed her, and she did
not wish to seem too troublesome an amateur to Milt. She would see him
in Livingston, and tell him how well she had driven. The spark plugs
kept clean enough now so that she could command more power, but----
Between the Park and the transcontinental road there are many climbs
short but severely steep; up-shoots like the humps on a scenic railway.
To tackle them with her uncertain motor was like charging a machine-gun
nest. She spent her nerve-force lavishly, and after every wild rush to
make a climb, she had to rest, to rub the suddenly aching back of her
neck. Because she was so tired, she did not take the trouble to save her
brakes by going down in gear. She let the brakes smoke while the river
and railroad below rose up at her.
There was a long drop. How long it was she did not guess, because it was
concealed by a curve at the top. She seemed to plane down forever. The
brakes squealed behind. She tried to shift to first but there was a
jarring snarl, and she could neither get into first nor back into third.
She was running in neutral, the great car coasting, while she tried to
slow it by jamming down the foot-brake. The car halted--and started on
again. The brake-lining which had been wished on her at Saddle Back was
burnt out.
She had the feeling of the car bursting out from under control ... ready
to leap off the road, into a wash. She wanted to jump. It took all her
courage to stay in the seat. She got what pressure she could from the
remaining band. With one hand she kept the accelerating car in the
middle of the road; with the other she tried to pull the handle of the
emergency brake back farther. She couldn't. She was not strong enough.
Faster, faster, rushing at the next curve so that she could scarce steer
round it----
As quietly as she could, she demanded of her father, "Pull back on this
brake lever, far as you can. Take both hands."
"I don't understand----"
"Heavens! Y' don't haft un'stand! Yank back! Yank, I tell you!"
Again the car slowed. She was able to get into second speed. Even that
check did not keep the car from darting down at thirty miles an
hour--which pace, to one who desires to saunter down at a dignified rate
of eighteen, is equivalent in terms of mileage on level ground to
seventy an hour, with a drunken driver, on a foggy evening, amid
traffic.
She got the car down and, in the midst of a valley of emptiness and
quiet, she dropped her head on her father's knee and howled.
"I just can't face going down another hill! I just can't face it!" she
sobbed.
"No, dolly. Mustn't. We better---- You're quite right. This young
Daggett is a very gentlemanly fellow. I didn't think his
table-manners---- But we'll sit here and regard the flora and fauna till
he comes. He'll see us through."
"Yes! He will! Honestly, dad----" She said it with the first touch of
hero-worship since she had seen an aviator loop loops. "Isn't he, oh,
effective! Aren't you glad he's here to help us, instead of somebody
like Jeff Saxton?"
"We-ul, you must remember that Geoffrey wouldn't have permitted the
brake to burn out. He'd have foreseen it, and have had a branch office,
with special leased wire, located back on that hill, ready to do
business the instant the market broke. Enthusiasm is a nice quality,
dolly, but don't misplace it. This lad, however trustworthy he may be,
would scarcely even be allowed to work for a man like Geoffrey Saxton.
It may be that later, with college----"
"No. He'd work for Jeff two hours. Then Jeff would give him that 'You
poor fish!' look, and Milt would hit him, and stroll out, and go to the
North Pole or some place, and discover an oil-well, and hire Jeff as his
nice, efficient general manager. And---- I do wish Milt would hurry,
though!"
It was dusk before they heard the pit-pit-pit chuckling down the hill.
Milt's casual grin changed to bashfulness as Claire ran into the road,
her arms wide in a lovely gesture of supplication, and cried, "We been
waiting for you so long! One of my brake-bands is burnt out, and the
other is punk."
"Well, well. Let's try to figure out something to do."
She waited reverently while the local prophet sat in his bug, stared at
the wheels of the Gomez, and thought. The level-floored,
sagebrush-sprinkled hollow had filled with mauve twilight and creeping
stilly sounds. The knowable world of yellow lights and security was far
away. Milt was her only means of ever getting back to it.
"Tell you what we might try," he speculated. "I'll hitch on behind you,
and hold back in going down hill."
She did not even try to help him while he again cleaned the spark plugs
and looked over brakes, oil, gas, water. She sat on the running-board,
and it was pleasant to be relieved of responsibility. He said nothing at
all. While he worked he whistled that recent refined ballad:
I wanta go back to Oregon
And sit on the lawn, and look at the dawn.
Oh motheruh dear, don't leavuh me here,
The leaves are so sere, in the fallothe year,
I wanta go back to Oregugon,
To dearuh old Oregugon.
They started, shouting optimistically to each other, lights on, trouble
seeming over--and they stopped after the next descent, and pools of
tears were in the corners of Claire's eyes. The holdback had not
succeeded. Her big car, with its quick-increasing momentum, had jerked
at the bug as though it were a lard-can. The tow-rope had stretched,
sung, snapped, and again, in fire-shot delirium, she had gone rocking
down hill.
He drove up beside her, got out, stood at her elbow. His "I'm a bum
inventor. We'll try somethin' else" was so careless that, in her
nerve-twanging exhaustion she wailed, "Oh, don't be so beastly cheerful!
You don't care a bit!"
In the dusk she could see him straighten, and his voice came sharp as he
ignored the ever-present parental background and retorted, "Somebody has
got to be cheerful. Matter fact, I worked out the right stunt, coming
down."
Like a man in the dentist's chair, recovering between bouts, she drowsed
and ignored the fact that in a few minutes she would again have to
reassemble herself, become wakeful and calm, and go through quite
impossible maneuvers of driving. Milt was, with a hatchet from his
camping-kit, cutting down a large scrub pine. He dragged it to the Gomez
and hitched it to the back axle. The knuckles of the branches would dig
into the earth, the foliage catch at every pebble.
"There! That anchor would hold a truck!" he shouted.
It held. She went down the next two hills easily. But she was through.
Her forearms and brain were equally numb. She appealed to Milt, "I can't
seem to go on any more. It's so dark, and I'm so tired----"
"All right. No ranch houses anywheres near, so we'll camp here, if Mr.
Boltwood doesn't mind."
Claire stirred herself to help him prepare dinner. It wasn't much of a
dinner to prepare. Both cars had let provisions run low. They had bacon
and petrified ends of a loaf and something like coffee--not much like
it. Scientists may be interested in their discovery that as a substitute
for both cream and sugar in beverages strawberry jam is a fallacy.
For Mr. Boltwood's bed Milt hauled out the springy seat-cushions of both
cars. The Gomez cushion was three inches thicker than that of the bug,
which resulted in a mattress two stories in front with a lean-to at the
foot, and the entire edifice highly slippery. But with a blanket from
Milt's kit, it was sufficient. To Claire, Milt gave another blanket,
his collection of antique overcoats, and good advice. He spoke vaguely
of a third blanket for himself. And he had one. Its dimensions were
thirteen by twenty inches, it was of white wool, he had bought it in
Dakota for Vere de Vere, and many times that day he had patted it and
whispered, "Poor old cat."
Under his blankets Mr. Boltwood thought of rattlesnakes, bears,
rheumatism, Brooklyn, his debt to Milt, and the fact that--though he
hadn't happened to mention it to Claire--he had expected to be killed
when the brake had burned out.
Claire was drowsily happy. She had got through. She was conscious of
rustling sagebrush, of the rapids of the Yellowstone beside her, of open
sky and sweet air and a scorn for people in stuffy rooms, and
comfortably ever conscious of Milt, ten feet away. She had in him the
interest that a young physician would have in a new X-ray machine, a
printer in a new font of type, any creator in a new outlet for his
power. She would see to it that her Seattle cousins, the Gilsons, helped
him to know the right people, during his university work. She herself
would be back in Brooklyn, but perhaps he would write to her,
write--write letters--Brooklyn--she was in Brooklyn--no, no, where was
she?--oh, yes, camping--bad day--brakes---- No, she would not marry Jeff
Saxton! Brooklyn--river singing--stars----
And when Milt wasn't unromantically thinking of his cold back, he
exulted. "She won't be back among her own folks till Seattle. Probably
forget me then. Don't blame her. But till we get there, she'll let me
play in her yard. Gee! In the morning I'll be talking to her again, and
she's right there, right now!"
In the morning they were all very stiff, but glad of the sun on
sagebrush and river, and the boy and girl sang over breakfast. While
Milt was gathering fuel he looked up at Claire standing against a
background of rugged hills, her skirt and shoes still smug, but her
jacket off, her blouse turned in at the throat, her hair blowing, her
sleeves rolled up, one hand on her hip, erect, charged with vigor--the
spirit of adventure.
When her brake had been relined, at Livingston, they sauntered
companionably on to Butte. And the day after Butte, when Milt was half a
mile behind the Gomez, a pink-haired man with a large, shiny revolver
stepped out from certain bushes, and bowed politely, and at that point
Milt stopped.