"And then," complained Claire, "they talk about Amy Lowell! I leave it to you, Henry B., if any union poet has ever written as gay a refrain as 'Ohop Ladd'!"
She was not merely playing mental whist. She was trying to keep from worry. All the way she had heard of Blewett Pass; its fourteen miles of climbing, and the last half mile of stern pitch. On this eastern side of the pass, the new road was not open; there was a tortuous, flint-scattered trail, too narrow, in most places, for the passing of other cars. Claire was glad that Milt and Pinky were near her.
If so many of the race of kind advisers of tourists had not warned her about it, doubtless she would have gone over the pass without difficulty. But their voluntary croaking sapped her nerve, and her father's. He kept worrying, "Do you think we better try it?" When they stopped at a ranch house at the foot of the climb, for the night, he seemed unusually tired. He complained of chill. He did not eat breakfast. They started out silent, depressed.
He crouched in the corner of the seat. She looked at him and was anxious. She stopped on the first level space on the pass, crying, "You are perfectly miserable. I'm afraid of—— I think we ought to see a doctor."
"Oh, I'll be all right."
But she waited till Milt came pit-pattering up the slope. "Father feels rather sick. What shall I do? Turn round and drive to the nearest doctor—at Cashmere, I suppose?"
"There's a magnolious medico ahead here on the pass," Pinky Parrott interrupted. "A young thing, but they say he's a graduate of Harvard. He's out here because he has some timber-claims. Look, Milt o' the Daggett, why don't you drive Miss Boltwood's 'bus—make better time, and hustle the old gent up to the doc, and I'll come on behind with your machine."
"Why," Claire fretted, "I hate——"
A new Milt, the boss, abrupt, almost bullying, snapped out of his bug. "Good idee. Jump in, Claire. I'll take your father up. Heh, whasat, Pink? Yes, I get it; second turn beyond grocery. Right. On we go. Huh? Oh, we'll think about the gold-mine later, Pink."
With the three of them wedged into the seat of the Gomez, and Pinky recklessly skittering after them in the bug, they climbed again—and lo! there was no climb! Unconsciously Claire had hesitated before dashing at each sharp upsloping bend; had lost headway while she was wondering, "Suppose the car went off this curve?" Milt never sped up, but he never slackened. His driving was as rhythmical as music.