Another brief silence.
“The cut-out!” she ordered.
Hillyer bent to the mechanism, and the engine, with the muffler off, roared and shrieked as it took the smooth white road, with every bar and rivet throbbing under the pressure. Only then did Marion turn, and motion to Smythe. He leaned forward, clinging to the back of her seat.
“The doctor?” she shouted in his ear.
“Craven had started for Tellurium,” he yelled back. “Said he’d kill the sorrels. I told him there was a doctor at Lake Cobalt––Doctor Norris of Omaha––just arrived, with his family. ‘You’re not such a fool 150 after all,’ said Craven. (I’ll talk with him about that later.) ‘Thanks!’ I said, and pulled my horse out of the way. ‘That saves two days.’ He gave the horses the whip again, and I started for Huntington’s to tell you––Watch out! There’s the turn!” he shouted in Hillyer’s ear.
The wheels tore up the sand as the machine, with the power off but still going at more than half-speed under its momentum, skidded and scraped around the turn into Haig’s road.
“Now!” cried Marion.
Again the automobile shivered, and plunged, and went clamoring like a mad thing up the little valley, the hills echoing back its roar. The white road leaped up at them, gulping them in. A red steer, astray from some pasture, crossed the road far ahead of them, and Marion closed her eyes as the machine, with a sickening swerve, missed it by inches. The next instant she was pointing to the group of buildings squatting under the hill; and then she was out of the automobile, and running to Farrish at the door of the barn. His face confirmed her worst fears.
“Where is he?” she asked, with a swift look around.
He pointed toward the larger of the two cottages. With Hillyer and Smythe silently following, she ran to the cottage, and through the open door. There she found herself in a bare, uncarpeted room, furnished only with two chairs and a table. On the table lay a faded and battered gray hat. For an instant her gaze rested on it, and a lump rose in her throat. But she resolutely turned away, tightening her lips.