"If my tires only stick it out--they ought to--this road hasn't a sharp
rock on it."
But from sixty miles she must pull down sharply. Far ahead something
was across the road; perhaps only a shadow, perhaps a tangible barrier;
she didn't know these roads any too well.
She cut off her power, jammed on foot and emergency brakes, and so came
to a stop just in time. Here a fence stretched across the road; the
tall gate throwing its black shadows on the white moonlit soil was not
five feet from her hood when she stopped.
She jumped down, threw the gate wide open, propped it back with a stone
knowing full well how the farmers and cattlemen hereabouts builded
their gates to shut automatically, drove through in such haste that she
grazed the gate itself and so jarred it into closing behind her, and
was again glancing from road to speedometer--twenty-five, thirty-five,
a turn to negotiate, seen far ahead, dropping back to twenty-five, to
twenty. A straight, alluring stretch--twenty-five, thirty-five,
forty-five, fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-two, sixty-three--the far
rim of the valley, another line of hills black under the stars--fifty
again and down to twenty-five, to twenty and horn blowing as she sped
into the mouth of the first canon.
And again, when at last she was down in Old Man Packard's valley and
within hailing distance of his misshapen monster of a house, she set
her horn to blaring like the martial trumpet of an invading army.
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