CHAPTER XXIV
So far Lib Knox had resisted all attempts to be friendly with Tyke. He had tried candy, a little white kitten, and a fox terrier poodle, but Lib only turned a cold shoulder.
Even the day when he arrived in a motor cycle with a side-car and offered her a ride he almost failed, although he could see that it went hard with her to refuse. It was when at last he told her that she was afraid, and dared her to come with him for a five-mile spin, that she finally yielded. Lib never could take a dare.
Seated in the chariot, she surveyed her comrades with superior arrogance and enjoyed to the full her triumphal departure from the district where she lived. But once out on the highway, Tyke let out all the power and shot through space as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses. Lib gripped the sides of her car and sat erect, her eyes bulging, her white lips set in a frightened smile. She was badly scared, but she was game.
For several miles he tore away at this mad pace, seeming to graze telegraph poles, almost telescope automobiles, and just escaped killing men and dogs. Then he slowed down and turned into a side road where there was comparatively little traffic, a cross-road leading to another highway.
Lib, breathless, still gripped the car, obviously speechless.
“Now, look here, kid,” said her captor, bending toward her insinuatingly, “you thought that was fast, didn’t you? But that ain’t a continental to what I kin do with this here brig. Why, I kin go so fast it’ll take the hair right off’n yer head and leave yer bald like a old man. It’ll take yer breath outen ya, so’t’ya can’t speak right fer a week, an’ it’ll maybe sweep ya right out in the field and leave ya fer the crows ta pick. An’ that’s what I’m agonta do’ith ya kid, ef ya don’t tell me where that doggone uncle of yourn is hanging up. See? I’m givin’ ya time till I get ta that there highway out there t’consider. Ef ya don’t come across with what I want y’ll be slung like a arrow through the air, an’ ya won’t know yerself. Y’ll wonder where’s yer daddy an’ yer ma, and yell like a little baby, but it won’t do no good, fer nobody can’t hear ya when yer goin’ like a wild cat. Now, what say? Are ye givin’ me the necessary information, ur shall I let ’er go?”
Lib was gripping the sides of her car with small, wiry fingers that were white and tense. Her little freckled face was white beneath its tan, and the bronze-gold of her bobbed curls ruffled above eyes that were wide with fear. She swallowed to get her voice, and suddenly her sharp little lips trembled into an impish grin and she trembled out tauntingly:
“G-g-go ahead! I-l-l-like it!”
“The devil you do!” roared Tyke angrily. “I’ll give ye enough then, you little runt you,” and they shot into the highway into the midst of the worst traffic they had yet seen. Tyke was so angry he could scarcely see where he went, and he let out the power till they seemed to be but a streak in the air as they flew along to what seemed like destruction. It seemed to little Lib of the fiery heart that she was aging as she went, that if she ever stopped she would be old and tottering, that her hands were numb and her face stung with the wind, and she was cold to her soul through the thin little clothing she wore. But she gave no sign, as the car went on and on, and miles of trees and meadows and houses and towns shot by in the flash of an eye. Lib wondered if it would go on forever. And then, just as she thought she could not hold on another minute, as she wished she might drop from the back and be crushed into insensibility by the fall, and never come to life again any more, because her heart hurt so in her breast, and her eyes were going to cry (which to Lib was the worst thing that could ever happen to her, that she should be weak enough to cry)—just then, when things could not have gone on any longer and she exist, they came to a road leading into the woods and the motor cycle slowed down and bumped into the rough road and up a hill into dense woods, suddenly coming to a standstill.