"We'll chase him. In my car."
"Don't you mind?"
"Of course not. I do not give up my objections to the roughing philosophy, but—— You were right about these shoes—— Oh, don't leave me behind! Want to go along!"
These sentences she broke, scattered, and totally lost as she scrambled after him, down the rocks. He halted. His lips trembled. He picked her up, carried her down, hesitated a second while his face—curiously foreshortened as she looked up at it from his big arms—twisted with emotion. He set her down gently, and she climbed into the Gomez.
It seemed to her that he drove rather too carefully, too slowly. He took curves and corners evenly. His face was as empty of expression, as unmelodramatic, as that of a jitney driver. Then she looked at the speedometer. He was making forty-eight miles an hour down hill and forty to thirty on upgrades.
They were in sight of the fleeing Pinky in two miles. Pinky looked back; instantly was to be seen pulling his hat low, stooping over—the demon driver. Milt merely sat more erect, looked more bland and white-browed and steady.
The bug fled before them on a winding shelf road. It popped up a curve, then slowed down. "He took it too fast. Poor Pink!" said Milt.
They gained on that upslope, but as the road dropped, the bug started forward desperately. Another car was headed toward them; was drawn to the side of the road, in one of the occasional widenings. Pinky passed it so carelessly that, with crawling spine, Claire saw the outer wheels of the bug on the very edge of the road—the edge of a fifty-foot drop. Milt went easily past the halted car—even waved his hand to the waiting driver.
This did not seem to Claire at all like the chase of a thief. She looked casually ahead at Pinky, as he whirled round an S-shaped curve on the downslope, then—— It was too quick to see what happened. The bug headed directly toward the edge of the road, shot out, went down the embankment, over and over. It lay absurdly upside-down, its muffler and brake-rods showing in place of the seat and hood.
Milt quite carefully stopped the Gomez. The day was still—just a breathing of running water in the deep gully. The topsy-turvy car below them was equally still; no sight of Pinky, no sound.