For a perilous moment that seemed ages-long to the girls the car hovered near the edge of the bank. Instinctively both Florence and Peggy leaned to the other side of the car, as if to make their weight the deciding factor in keeping the car from falling into the ditch.
Then, to their unbounded relief, their car swept by, missing the other by a few inches.
“A miracle!” gasped Peggy.
“Keep stepping on it!” implored Peggy as she turned to look back at the smugglers’ car. “They’re coming full tilt after us.”
“O-oh, hear them yelling at us!” put in Florence, her eyes dilated with fright. “They’re trying to catch us. Step on it! Suppose they should shoot at us—or our tires!”
Though Jo Ann heard the girls’ earnest pleas, she wasted no energy in replying. Every cell in her brain must be centered on driving. That car was still dangerously near. They might push past and try that same trick of forcing her into the ditch on the other side. Moreover, the road ahead was much steeper and narrower. It wound threadlike up the mountain side. What if those smugglers should deliberately wait and force them off that high road! To be knocked off that steep rocky cliff would mean death for all of them. And what if her engine should go bad up there—or a tire blow out! “Steady, Jo,” she ordered herself. “Stop worrying and concentrate on driving.”
“They’re not gaining an inch,” Florence called out encouragingly then.
“But they’re not losing any,” added Peggy.
When, in spite of her determination not to worry, she had to slow down at turns in the winding road, she found her breath coming more and more quickly. Perhaps the smugglers could make the turns faster.
Again and again Florence encouraged her with, “They’re not gaining.”