“Yes, if you wish.”
“If I wish.” Roberts brought the goggles down from his forehead significantly. “If I wish,” he repeated, the inflection peculiar. He looked ahead. The broad prairie road, dust 223 white in its July whiteness, stretched straight out before them, without a turn or a curve, direct as the crow flies for forty miles, and on through two counties, as he knew. A light wind, begot of their motion alone, played on their faces, mingled with the throbbing purr of the engine in their ears. “If I wish,” for the third time; and notch by notch the throttle began to open.
On they went, the self-evolved breeze a gale now, the throb of the big motor a continuous moan, the cloud of dust behind them a dull brown bank against the sky. On they went over convex grades that tilted gently first to the right, then to the left, over culverts that spoke one single note of protest, over tiny bridges that echoed hollow at the impact; past dazzling green cornfields and yellow blocks of ripening grain, through great shadows of homestead groves and clumps of willows that marked the lowest point of swales, on—on—
Roberts leaned over close, but his eyes did not leave the road for the fraction of a second.
“Afraid, girl?” he asked.
“No.”
Again the man looked ahead. They were fair in the open now, already far from the city. It was the heat of a blistering Sunday and not a 224 team or a pedestrian was astir. Ahead, for a mile, for miles perhaps, as far as they could see, not an animate dot marred the surface of the taut, stretched, yellow-white ribbon.
“Shall I let her out, Elice?”
“Yes.”
“Sure you’re not afraid—in the least?”