"It's done! The bottom of the car looks as though there had been a massacre of matches, just as the floor round Steve's chair looks when he is smoking his pipe, but what are a few matches at a time like this? What can I do next?"
"Jerry, you amazing girl! Nothing—nothing seems hard or impossible when you have a share in it," Greyson burst out impetuously. He steadied his voice and directed, "When we come to the gate get out and open it. I'll run through to the crossing. Be sure that you fasten the gate securely behind you. No sane person will think of our getting down the track this way. No sane person would think of attempting it," he added under his breath.
Once through the gate Greyson cautiously steered the car off the crossing on to the track which paralleled that on which the west-bound train would come. He manipulated the motor until the left-hand wheels of the car hugged the inside of one rail and the right-hand wheels were in the road-bed. He waited for flashes of lightning to show him the way. They came almost incessantly. The thunder crashed and rumbled as though the gods of the mountains were playfully pitching TNT shells for exercise.
"This is going to be one little stunt," the man confided to the girl as she took her seat beside him. "Keep the lantern in your hand. When I say 'Ready' stand up on the seat and wave like mad. Now we're off, and may the gods be good to us!"
It wasn't a heathen god whom Jerry Courtlandt importuned. She never looked back upon that wild ride without a renewed thanksgiving that the prayer in her heart had been answered, without a reminiscent ache in every bone of her body, without seeing a close-up of Greyson, tense-jawed and wrinkle-browed bent over the wheel. He drove with his eyes intent on the tracks which seemed glistening streaks of fire when the lightning flashed. The swift transitions from dazzling light to inky darkness blinded her. It would always remain one of the inexplicable miracles to the girl that the flivver did not capsize. She felt no fear at the time. Only when from behind them came the sound as of a hundred furies let loose did she shudder.
"Is—is that a pack of wolves?" she whispered hoarsely.
"Coyotes. Two can make as much noise as a dozen of anything else. Hear that? Begin to wave! Ready!"
Jerry scrambled to the seat. She lost her balance as the car careened tipsily. She clutched Greyson's hair with a violence which wrung a stifled "Ouch!" from the victim.
"I'm sorry. My mistake! I wasn't trained as a bareback rider," the girl apologized with an hysterical ripple of laughter.
"Wave! Wave!" Greyson shouted above the din of the storm.