“By gosh I bet both hubs is busted,” he said under his breath—Furnace Lake impresses one to silence, somehow. “She’s runnin’ like a wolf—but she ain’t "goin’.”
He waited for a minute longer, trifling with the gas, staring and listening. The car was shaking with the throb of the motor, but there was no forward lunge, nothing whatever but vibration of the engine. “Set-tin’ here burnin’ gas like a ’lection bonfire—she sure would think I’m drunk if she knew about it,” Casey muttered, and straddled over the side of the car to the running board.
“I wish—to—hell, I hadn’t promised her not to cuss,” he gritted, and with one hand still on the wheel, Casey shut off the gas and stepped down. He stepped down upon a surface sliding beneath him at the rate of close to forty miles an hour. The Ford went on, spinning away from him in a wide circle, since Casey had unconsciously turned the wheel to the left as he let go. The impact of meeting that hard clay stunned him just at first, and he rolled over a couple of times before he began to regain his senses.
He lifted himself groggily to his knees and looked for the car, saw it bearing down upon him from the direction whence he had come. Before he had time to wonder much at the phenomenon it was upon him, over him with a lurch, and gone again.
Casey was tough, and he never knew when he was whipped. He crawled up to his knees again, saw the same Ford coming at him with dimming headlights from the same direction it had taken before, made a wild clutch, was knocked down and run over again. You may not believe that, but Casey had the bruises to prove it.
On the third round the Ford had slowed to a walk, figuratively speaking. Casey was pretty groggy, and he thought his back was broken, but he was mad clear through. He caught the Ford by its fender, hung on, clutching frantically for a better hold, was dragged a little distance so, and then, its speed slackened to a gentle, forward roll, he made shift to get aboard and give it the gas before the engine had quite stopped. Which he told himself was lucky, because he couldn’t have cranked the thing to save his life.
By sheer doggedness he drove on to camp, drank cold coffee left from his early breakfast, and decided that the bite of a Ford, while it is poisonous, is not necessarily fatal, unless it attacks one in a vital spot.
Casey could not drill a hole, he could not swing a pick. For two days he limped painfully and confined his activities to cooking his meals. Frequently he would look at the Ford speculatively and shake his head. There was something uncanny about it.
“She sure has got it in for me,” he mused. “You can’t blame her for runnin’ off when I dropped the reins and stepped out. But that don’t account for the way she come at me, and the way she got me every circle she made. That’s human. It’s dog-gone human! I’ve cussed her a lot, and I’ve done things to her—like that sirup I poured into her—and dog-gone her, she’s been layin’ low and watchin’ her chance all this while. That there car knowed!”
The third day after the attack Casey was still too sore to work, but he managed to crank the Ford—eying it curiously the while, and with respect, too—and started down the mesa and up over the ridge and on down to the lake. He was still studying the matter, still wondering if Fords can think. He wanted to tell the widow about it, and get her opinion. The widow was a smart woman. A little touchy on the liquor question, maybe, but smart. You ask anybody.