After noon, when they had left the Park and entered Gardiner, Milt announced, "I've got to stick around a while. The key in my steering-gear seems to be worn. May have to put in a new one. Get the stuff at a garage here. If you wouldn't mind waiting, be awful glad to tag, and try to give a few helping hands till the oil cleans itself out."
"I'll just stroll on," she said, but she drove away as swiftly as she could. Her father's worry about obligations disturbed her, and she did not wish to seem too troublesome an amateur to Milt. She would see him in Livingston, and tell him how well she had driven. The spark plugs kept clean enough now so that she could command more power, but——
Between the Park and the transcontinental road there are many climbs short but severely steep; up-shoots like the humps on a scenic railway. To tackle them with her uncertain motor was like charging a machine-gun nest. She spent her nerve-force lavishly, and after every wild rush to make a climb, she had to rest, to rub the suddenly aching back of her neck. Because she was so tired, she did not take the trouble to save her brakes by going down in gear. She let the brakes smoke while the river and railroad below rose up at her.
There was a long drop. How long it was she did not guess, because it was concealed by a curve at the top. She seemed to plane down forever. The brakes squealed behind. She tried to shift to first but there was a jarring snarl, and she could neither get into first nor back into third. She was running in neutral, the great car coasting, while she tried to slow it by jamming down the foot-brake. The car halted—and started on again. The brake-lining which had been wished on her at Saddle Back was burnt out.
She had the feeling of the car bursting out from under control ... ready to leap off the road, into a wash. She wanted to jump. It took all her courage to stay in the seat. She got what pressure she could from the remaining band. With one hand she kept the accelerating car in the middle of the road; with the other she tried to pull the handle of the emergency brake back farther. She couldn't. She was not strong enough. Faster, faster, rushing at the next curve so that she could scarce steer round it——
As quietly as she could, she demanded of her father, "Pull back on this brake lever, far as you can. Take both hands."
"I don't understand——"
"Heavens! Y' don't haft un'stand! Yank back! Yank, I tell you!"
Again the car slowed. She was able to get into second speed. Even that check did not keep the car from darting down at thirty miles an hour—which pace, to one who desires to saunter down at a dignified rate of eighteen, is equivalent in terms of mileage on level ground to seventy an hour, with a drunken driver, on a foggy evening, amid traffic.
She got the car down and, in the midst of a valley of emptiness and quiet, she dropped her head on her father's knee and howled.