Almost miraculously the car stayed in the road. The girls had been wonderful. White and terrorized, yet neither had clutched at her companion, nor hindered his doing what was best for their safety.
When the car stopped, the front right tire was almost off the road. The girls, quivering with excitement, got out and exclaimed simultaneously, “Another adventure and narrow escape!”
Dick, knowing better than the girls how truly narrow their escape had been, stepped forward, his dark eyes serious, and extended a hand to the cowboy. “Jerry,” he said earnestly, “I won’t say again that I probably know more about managing cars than you do. If it hadn’t been for your quick thinking and skill, we would surely have turned turtle in the sand and if the spark had been on, the car might have gone up in flames.”
But Jerry would not accept the compliment. He shook his head as he removed his sombrero and wiped beads of moisture from his forehead. “Dick,” he said, “thanks just the same, but I reckon I was needlessly reckless. I wasn’t right sure about the sand storm, just at first, but later when I saw that it was heading south all right, I kept on speeding.”
Turning to the smaller girl who stood very still; seemingly calm, though her lips quivered when she tried to smile, the cowboy said contritely, “Little Sister, if you won’t stop trusting me, I’ll swear to never again take any such needless risks.”
Dora, watching the two, thought, “It matters such a terrible lot to Jerry what Mary thinks about him. Some day she’s going to wake up and realize that he loves her.”
Dick was removing his coat, and Jerry, evidently satisfied with Mary’s low-spoken reply, turned to get tools out from under the front seat.
Half an hour later the small car was again on its way. The sun was setting behind the mountains where so recently they had been.
Mary looked back at them. Grim and dark and forbidding they were, deep in shadow, but the peaks were aglow with flame color. The floor of the desert valley about them was like a sea of shimmering golden water; the ripples and dunes of sand were like glistening waves.
“Such a gloriousness!” Dora exclaimed, turning a radiant face toward her companion.