Oscar joined in Pen's laugh and started for the door, shaking his head and picking his teeth. Pen looked after him uneasily.
That afternoon Pen and Jane went with Bill and Oscar for an automobile ride over the desert. The two women sat in the tonneau, Oscar in front with Bill. The desert road was rough, full of bowlders and ruts. But neither Oscar nor Bill was hampered by roads. Whenever some distant spot roused their curiosity, the machine left the road and plunged madly across the desert, through cactus thickets and yucca clumps, through draws and over sand drifts.
Oscar and Bill kept up a shouted conversation with each other. But Pen and Jane each clutched a side of the machine, braced their feet and gave their entire attention to keeping from being flung bodily from the car. Forewarned for miles, no living creature crossed their path. The din and the dust, the hairbreadth escapes made the discomfort of the ride for the two women indescribable.
When Bill finally drew up before the ranch house door with his usual flourish of staccato explosions, Oscar alighted and watched Pen and his wife crawl feebly from the tonneau.
"Caramba!" he said. "That was a fine ride! I've been wanting to get a look at that country and a talk with you, Bill, for a month. I feel well rested."
Pen and Jane looked at each other and at the two men's grins of complaisance. Then, without a word, the two women sank against each other on the doorstep and laughed until the men, bewildered and exasperated, took themselves off to the barn. Finally Jane rose and wiped her eyes.
"There's not an inch on my body that isn't black and blue," she said weakly.
Pen pulled herself up by clinging to the door knob. "That was a real 'pleasure exertion,'" she whispered feebly. "But I'd do it twice over for a laugh like this. I haven't laughed so for eight years."
Jane gave Pen a kitchen apron and tied one on herself while she nodded. "Thank heaven! I always could laugh. It's saved my reason many a time. I don't want you to do a thing about getting supper, but you'll be sitting round in the kitchen and that'll keep your skirt clean."
Pen picked up a pan of cold boiled potatoes and began to peel them with more good will than skill. "I do like you, Jane Ames," she said. "Two people couldn't laugh together like that and not have been meant to understand each other."