“I don’t care whether you want to go or not. Get into the car!”
She climbed to the seat beside the wheel; he tossed in the olive-wood box, turned on his lamps, and took the wheel. 173
“May I have a match for my cigarette?” she asked meekly.
He found one, scratched it; she placed a very thick and long cigarette between her lips and he lighted it for her.
Just as he threw in the clutch and the car started, the girl blew a shower of sparks from the end of her cigarette, rose in her seat, and flung the lighted cigarette high into the air. Instantly it burst into a flare of crimson fire, hanging aloft as though it were a fire balloon, and lighting up road and creek and bushes and fields with a brilliant strontium glare.
Then, far in the night, he heard a motor horn screech three times.
“You young devil!” he said, increasing the speed. “I ought to have remembered that every snake has its mate.... If you offer to touch me—if you move—if you as much as lift a finger, I’ll throw you into the creek!”
The car was flying now, reeling over the dirt road like a drunken thing. He hung grimly to the wheel, his strained gaze fixed on the shaft of light ahead, through which the road streamed like a torrent.
A great wind roared in his ears; his cap was gone. The car hurled itself forward through an endless tunnel of darkness lined with silver. Presently he began to slow down; the furious wind died away; the streaking darkness sped by less swiftly.
“Have you gone mad?” she cried in his ear. “You’ll kill us both!”