“Not a half mile between them,” the radio announcer droned. “The two last teams driven by Scot Jordan and Sinrock Charlie now lag behind.
“Surprise has been expressed in many quarters,” he droned on. “Surprise at the endurance of the girl racer, Florence Huyler.”
So she had them surprised? Florence smiled grimly as she gulped down a large mug of steaming coffee. “Surprised! Huh!” she said aloud. Then to the trail-house keeper’s wife, “Call me, please, when the time is up. I’m going to sleep.” She threw herself down upon a couch and was at once fast asleep.
In her sleep she dreamed—odd dream it was, too. In it she saw the huge Madam Chicaski placing seven candlesticks on the mantel at Rainbow Farm. Gold they must have been, for they shone like the sun. Then she saw the woman pouring something out of a huge copper kettle.
“Gold,” she whispered in her dream. “Gold coins, hundreds and hundreds of them.”
These were all poured on the table, some rolling on the floor. Then a little, dark man, Mr. Il-ay-ok, approached the table and began gathering them up. “I need them for my people,” was all he said.
Florence awoke with a start. The dream was at an end. The trail-house matron was shaking her.
“Time is up.”
One minute more and the girl was on her way back. But that dream, it lingered in the back of her mind. What did it mean? Probably nothing. Perhaps this, that life’s adventures are never at an end, that if she won this race, it was to be not an end but a beginning of other things. There was Madam Chicaski and her supposed treasure, Mr. Il-ay-ok and his people, and her grandfather’s mine. “Life,” she thought, “goes on and on and, like one’s shadow, adventure goes before it.”
But now once again she thought only of the race. Once again, as in a dream, the long, white trail glided on beneath her weary feet.