Absorbed in speeding, he grew taciturn, but Gin didn’t care. She sat back and stared at the road, trying to stop watching for bumps. That was the trouble with learning to drive; it ruined you as a passenger. With an effort she looked away from the spot of light that the car was pursuing, and stared at the side of the road. They were running by the railroad track. In the daytime, riding in the big passenger buses, the road was so familiar that she hated it, but now it was too dark to be anything but a dangerous path that might at any minute lurch towards the train tracks and carry them straight into the way of destruction. Once a bus had driven out too far on a soft shoulder, and had toppled over. The courier’s leg was hurt and a passenger broke a rib. If a train had come by.... She could hear a train chugging up the mountain. She half turned and saw a far-off glow. The road curved and looped and swept towards the track, and then away from it. The train was coming close ... closer ... closer ... perhaps now, just before it reached them, they would drive into its path. Harvey didn’t care. He went on just as fast as before.
A straining moment, then they were out of danger and the monster was neck and neck with them, puffing, shrieking, grinding, giving her a horrible close glimpse of its insides and an idea of what might have happened. Harvey stepped on the gas and for a moment they stayed together, then the train pulled ahead slowly, seemed to gather speed, marched by dragging a long tail spotted with square windows, and swung around a curve ahead to vanish forever. Only the smoke hung in the air and mixed with the smell of gasoline and burning cedar.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Harvey. “You’re pinching my arm.”
“Just playing,” she said, and moved over to her own side of the car again.
They reached Pecos hungry and a little chilled. There was a roadhouse nearby where people would stop for gas and, if they knew anything about the country, for food. They ate a leisurely dinner, chatting with the waitress and playing the two records that were not warped or cracked—“The Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Two Black Crows, Part III.” Driving home afterwards, Harvey went slower, surfeited with beefsteak. He slowed up outside of Beetie’s house, at Gin’s suggestion, and they peered through the windows to see if there was any possibility of joining in. Beetie and Flo had their noses in their cards, and their partners were two young men that Gin had never seen before.
“Do you want to crash it?” asked Harvey. “It looks dead. I can’t get very thrilled about it myself. Let’s go home and see what Madden’s up to.”
“Oh, he’ll be up at Stuart’s.”
“Maybe not. We’ll look.”
There was no one in the little house, but a log was still burning in the fireplace and Teddy had left dirty dishes on the table. A new unframed picture was hanging on the wall. Gin examined it. There were two mountains, one leaning over the other, and three adobe houses with red chile hanging from the roofs, making bands of red.
“Oh, did you hear about that?” said Harvey. “Mrs. Lennard is buying it for a hundred dollars. At least I think that’s the one. There are so many like it, around here.”