Affinities and Other Stories Part 3

We struck the sh.o.r.e with a b.u.mp that sent me on my knees, but Ferd grabbed my hand and jerked me out.

"Now run--if you ever ran in your life!" he said. "Make for that grove over there, and bend over. The bushes will hide us."

"I can't," I panted after a minute. "And why should I, Ferd? He's got his old boat by this time----"

"Run!" gasped Ferd. And I ran.

We crouched down in the grove. My teeth were chattering, but I was nothing to Ferd. He was pallid. The puddler landed just then. We heard him throw his oars into the boat and drag it up on the beach, and I knew he was examining the other boat and finding that the wine was gone. We could hear him breathing hard, and he even made a start toward us, beating the bushes with an oar. He was in a red fury, muttering to himself in the most horrible manner. I had been in Ferd's mill once or twice, and I remembered the enormous shoulders the men had, and how they simply toyed with steel rails; and I was paralysed. A puddler turned Berserk!

He gave it up just in time, however, and started back for the boat. I could see him moving about--a huge creature in white flannels. And he seemed to have cut himself on a branch or something, for he was tying a handkerchief round his forehead.

We did not dare to move until he had started back and was safely out from sh.o.r.e. Ferd's voice had lost its strained quality and he looked a little less like death. We could hear the picnic party calling to the man in the boat about the wine, and his calling back that we had got away with it, but for some of them to come over and they could beat the bushes. They couldn't come, of course, until he took the boat back.

"We've got to get out of here, Fan," Ferd said. "In ten minutes the whole shooting match will be here. Can you run any more?"

"Not a foot--I'm all in. And I lost a shoe in the water at the island."

Ferd groaned.

"They'll have us up for stealing their champagne," he said. "I suppose you can walk."

"I can limp along, I dare say." I was wet and cold, and horribly miserable. "Don't let me detain you. They can't arrest me for stealing their wine. You did that."

He turned to me suddenly.

"Fan," he said solemnly, "don't ask me why, but we must get out of here quick. Must! If you can't walk, roll. Now come on!"

There were no houses in sight. The trolley line ends there, and I think it is a picnic grove. He took my hand and dragged me along. I lost my other slipper, but he paid no attention when I told him of it; and just when I was about to sink down and die we reached a road.

"Now," said Ferd, "they came in something--machines probably--for they'll have to get back, and there are no more cars. Ah, there they are!"

There were two machines. I gripped Ferd's arm and held him back desperately.

"The chauffeurs?" I gasped.

"We'll kill 'em, if necessary," he said between clenched teeth.

We were loping down the road toward the machines--Ferd sloshing, rather, with each step; and we could hear loud calling from the islands and the banging of oars in oarlocks.

"F-Ferd," I managed to say, "c-can--you--drive--a--car?"

"Why, you can, can't you?"

"I--can--d-drive--my--own car. I d-don't--know about--any other."

"They're all alike. The principle's the same."

"I don't know anything about the principles," I said despairingly. "And I won't touch a strange machine."

"Oh, very well!" said Ferd sulkily. "We'll make a deuce of a stir--arrested here for stealing a case of champagne; but never mind.

It'll blow over."

"We can tell the whole story."

"We cannot!" he said gloomily. "We can't tell on Jane and Annette and Catherine. We'll have to take our medicine, that's all. We needn't give our own names. That's one thing."

I was perfectly crazed with fright and exhaustion. I leaned up against a fence, and I remembered the time Lily Slater asked Ollie Haynes to see her off to Chicago, her husband being out of town; and how Ollie was carried two hundred miles before the train would stop to let him off; and how Harry never believed the story and was off shooting big game at that very minute; and Lily getting gray over her ears as a result, and not even going out to lunch with anybody for fear there were detectives watching her.

And, compared with Day, Harry Slater was an angel of mildness.

The boat was almost across by that time and Ferd was wringing the ends of his trousers. A sort of frenzy seized me. It seemed to me it would be better to be found crushed under a strange car than to be arrested for stealing champagne. I started on, rather tottery.

"I'll try it, Ferd," I said. "I think we'll be killed; but come on!"

For once luck was with us. It was a car exactly like my own! I almost cried for joy. I leaped in and pressed the starter, and the purr of the engine was joyous, absolutely. I let in the clutch and the darling slid along without a jerk. We were saved! I could drive that car. I snapped the gear lever forward into high and the six cylinders leaped to our salvation. We were off, with the white road ahead; and the puddlers were only beaching their boat. Ferd sat half turned and watched for pursuit.

"They'll search the bushes first," he said. "They'll not think of the machines for a few minutes. We can hit it up along the highway for four or five miles; then we'd better turn into a side road and put out the lights and take off the license plates. They'll telephone ahead possibly and give the license number."

We were going pretty fast by that time and just at that moment I saw a buggy ahead in the road. Ferd called to me; but it was too late--I had pressed the siren and the very hills echoed.

"Good heavens, Fan!" he said. "You've done it now!"

We topped a rise just then and Ferd looked back. The puddlers were running along the road toward the place where they had left their cars.

It was a race for life after that. Ferd bent over and pressed the b.u.t.ton that put out the tail light, and I threw on all the gas I could.

"It's getting pretty serious," Ferd said. "We'll go up for a year or two for this, probably. Stealing a machine is no joke."

"If it comes to that I'll steer the thing over a bank and die with it!"

I said, with my jaw set. "Ferd, there's something wrong somewhere!

Listen to that knocking!"

The engine was not behaving well. It was not hitting right and it was telling on our speed. As we topped a long rise Ferd saw the lights of another car appear over the crest of the last hill. Down in the valley ahead lay a village, sound asleep. We raced through it like mad. A man in his shirt-sleeves rushed out of a house and yelled something to us about stopping, that we were under arrest. We almost went over him.

The race would be over soon, that was clear. The car was making time, but not better time than the other machine. I do not know how I got the idea, but we went limping and banging along until we had reached the edge of the town, and just beyond, beside the road, was a barn, with the doors open. I turned the car in there, shut off the engine and put out the lamps. Ferd caught the idea at once and leaped out and closed the doors.

"Good girl!" he said. "Unless the farmer heard us and comes out to investigate, this is pretty snug, lady-love. They'll pa.s.s us without even hesitating."

They did not, though. It gives me gooseflesh merely to remember the next half-hour. We waited inside the door for the car to pa.s.s. We could hear it coming. But just at the barn it stopped and we could hear them arguing. It seems the road forked there and they were not certain which way we had gone. My knees were shaking with terror and Ferd was breathing hard.

When I look back I think I should have noticed how queer Ferd was during the whole thing; and, when you think of it, why did he steal the boat at the beginning and not just borrow it? But I was absolutely unsuspicious; and as for noticing, there was no time.

I lost my courage, I'll admit, when they stopped; and I ran to the back of the barn. There was a horse there and I squeezed in beside the thing; it was company anyhow and not running about the country trying to arrest people who were merely attempting to get home. It seemed uneasy and I tried to pat its head to soothe it--and it had horns! I almost fainted.

Somehow or other I climbed out, and Ferd was coming toward me.

"Sh!" he whispered. "They've roused the farmer, and--holy smoke!--they're coming in!"

Somebody had opened one of the doors about six inches. That made a path of moonlight across the board floor.