Miss Harding leaned over and said something to me. The whirr of the machinery and the swaying of the car made conversation difficult. I presume she thought I was determined to show my nerve and skill as a driver.
"Why this mad haste, Jacques Henri?" she again cried, her head so close to mine that her hair brushed my cheek.
I returned a non-committal smile and fixed my eyes on the road which slipped toward us like a huge belt propelled by invisible pulleys.
The miles kept pace with the minutes. Of a sudden the sun was blotted out. When I lifted my eyes from the road I saw birds circling high in the sky. The cattle in adjacent fields lifted their heads and moved uneasily as if some instinct sounded a warning in their dull brains. Above the trees I saw the skirmish line of the storm.
In after hours Miss Harding told me that she had quickly solved the secret of my wild dash. For a quarter of an hour she hung to the swaying seat and said no word. Once I looked into her eyes and read in them that she understood.
We dashed through a little village and paid no heed to the angry shouts and menacing gestures of a man who wore a huge star on his chest. Oak Cliff was only ten miles away. Could we make it?
The restful grays of the cloud had disappeared; and low down on the horizon I saw a belt of bluish black, and as I looked, a bolt of lightning jabbed through it. We were now running parallel to the storm, and I believed I could beat it to Oak Cliff. I felt certain I could reach the little hamlet of Pine Top, and from there on it would be easy to get to shelter. Between us and Pine Top was practically an unbroken wilderness, a part of the country reserved as a source of water supply for the great city far to the south of us.
We were taking a hill with the second speed clutch on when a grating sound came to my alert ears, and with it an unnatural shudder of the machinery. I threw off power and applied the brakes. As the car stopped the deep rolling bass of the thunder rumbled over the hills.
"We are caught," declared Miss Harding, but there was no fear in her voice.
"Not yet!" I asserted, springing from the car and making a frenzied examination of the cause of our breakdown. I knew it was not serious, and when I located it I joyously proclaimed it a mere trifle. But automobile trifles demand minutes, and nature did not postpone the resistless march of its storm battalions. As I toiled with wrench and screw-driver I cursed the folly which induced me to plunge into that desolate stretch of forest and marsh.