“What’s she riding?” asked Teddy.
“Flying Centaur; new make, I guess. Bet she pulls down a wad for it, too. Chunky little thing, ain’t she? You wouldn’t think she carried metal to see her in skirts. If she took a spill at ninety, she’d bounce some.”
“Oh, shut your head!” exclaimed Teddy Rocco, with a sudden anger that puzzled even himself.
It was not without a tinge of professional jealousy that the two young men stood in the center of the course and watched Miss Simmons pull her bright new machine to the starting-point and climb into the saddle. In Teddy’s mind there was also a certain jealousy of Santoni, who held her for the start. But with the first healthy rip of the exhaust, and the first smooth and perfect circle she described round the soup-plate, these feelings were submerged in professional appreciation.
Moment by moment she gathered speed, mounting the steep banking accurately with every lap, until she was roaring and rattling round the very uppermost edge like a bright-red marble in a basin. Santoni slowly sauntered over to them, performing a sort of involuntary waltz as he turned to follow her with his goggle eyes.
“Maybe she ain’t no funeral, either,” he said.
“You ought to be lynched for letting her do it, San,” said Teddy. “It isn’t a girl’s game.”
“Well, wouldn’t that jar you?” Santoni turned on Ryan with palms outspread. “First he was sore because he thought she couldn’t ride, and now he’s sore because she can!”
Teddy made no reply. A new and strange feeling gripped him by the throat until he choked. As he watched the track, a picture engraved itself indelibly on his heart: a tiny scarlet figure astride a machine that roared round and round with fiendish energy until it hung out almost horizontally from the steep rim of the banking. Sadie’s black eyes were narrowed to slits; her roped hair flew out behind her; her lips were compressed in the lust of speed as she braced her strong little knees and elbows hard against the leaping of her angry motor. This was a sort of girl he had never imagined in his wildest speculations. A girl who understood motors, he thought, could not fail to be in every other way admirable. From such a girl, for example, a man need never fear anything less than a square deal.