Free Air Part 2

"Stuck?" he inquired, not very intelligently. "How much is Adolph charging you?"

"He wants three-fifty, and his harness broke, and he wants two dollars----"

"Oh! So he's still working that old gag! I've heard all about Adolph. He keeps that harness for pulling out cars, and it always busts. The last time, though, he only charged six bits to get it mended. Now let me reason with him."

The young man turned with vicious quickness, and for the first time Claire heard pidgin German--German as it is spoken between Americans who have never learned it, and Germans who have forgotten it:

"_Schon s.e.x_ hundred times _Ich h.o.r.e_ all about the way you been doing autos, Zolzac, you _verfluchter Schweinhund_, and I'll set the sheriff on you----"

"Dot ain'd true, maybe _einmal die Woche kommt_ somebody and _Ich muss die Arbeit immer la.s.sen und in die Regen ausgehen, und seh' mal_ how _die_ boots _sint mit_ mud covered, two dollars it don't pay for _die_ boots----"

"Now that's enough-plenty out of you, _seien die_ boots _verdammt_, and _mach' da.s.s du fort gehst_--muddy boots, h.e.l.l!--put _mal ein_ egg in _die_ boots and beat it, _verleicht_ maybe I'll by golly arrest you myself, _weiss du_! I'm a special deputy sheriff."

The young man stood stockily. He seemed to swell as his somewhat muddy hand was shaken directly at, under, and about the circ.u.mference of, Adolph Zolzac's hairy nose. The farmer was stronger, but he retreated.

He took up the reins. He whined, "Don't I get nothing I break de harness?"

"Sure. You get ten--years! And you get out!"

From thirty yards up the road, Zolzac flung back, "You t'ink you're pretty d.a.m.n smart!" That was his last serious reprisal.

Clumsily, as one not used to it, the young man lifted his cap to Claire, showing straight, wiry, rope-colored hair, brushed straight back from a rather fine forehead. "Gee, I was sorry to have to swear and holler like that, but it's all Adolph understands. Please don't think there's many of the folks around here like him. They say he's the meanest man in the county."

"I'm immensely grateful to you, but--do you know much about motors? How can I get out of this mud?"

She was surprised to see the youngster blush. His clear skin flooded.

His engaging smile came again, and he hesitated, "Let me pull you out."

She looked from her hulking car to his mechanical flea.

He answered the look: "I can do it all right. I'm used to the gumbo--regular mud-hen. Just add my power to yours. Have you a tow-rope?"

"No. I never thought of bringing one."

"I'll get mine."

She walked with him back toward his bug. It lacked not only top and side-curtains, but even windshield and running-board. It was a toy--a card-board box on toothpick axles. Strapped to the bulging back was a wicker suitcase partly covered by tarpaulin. From the seat peered a little furry face.

"A cat?" she exclaimed, as he came up with a wire rope, extracted from the tin back.

"Yes. She's the captain of the boat. I'm just the engineer."

"What is her name?"

Before he answered the young man strode ahead to the front of her car, Claire obediently trotting after him. He stooped to look at her front axle. He raised his head, glanced at her, and he was blushing again.

"Her name is Vere de Vere!" he confessed. Then he fled back to his bug.

He drove it in front of the Gomez-Dep. The hole in the road itself was as deep as the one on the edge of the cornfield, where she was stuck, but he charged it. She was fascinated by his skill. Where she would for a tenth of a second have hesitated while choosing the best course, he hurled the bug straight at the hole, plunged through with sheets of gla.s.sy black water arching on either side, then viciously twisted the car to the right, to the left, and straight again, as he followed the tracks with the solidest bottoms.

Strapped above the tiny angle-iron step which replaced his running-board was an old spade. He dug channels in front of the four wheels of her car, so that they might go up inclines, instead of pushing against the straight walls of mud they had thrown up. On these inclines he strewed the brush she had brought, halting to ask, with head alertly lifted from his stooped huddle in the mud, "Did you have to get this brush yourself?"

"Yes. Horrid wet!"

He merely shook his head in commiseration.

He fastened the tow-rope to the rear axle of his car, to the front of hers. "Now will you be ready to put on all your power as I begin to pull?" he said casually, rather respectfully.

When the struggling bug had pulled the wire rope taut, she opened the throttle. The rope trembled. Her car seemed to draw sullenly back. Then it came out--out--really out, which is the most joyous sensation any motorist shall ever know. In excitement over actually moving again, as fast as any healthy young snail, she drove on, on, the young man ahead grinning back at her. Nor did she stop, nor he, till both cars were safe on merely thick mud, a quarter of a mile away.

She switched off the power--and suddenly she was in a whirlwind of dizzy sickening tiredness. Even in her abandonment to exhaustion she noticed that the young man did not stare at her but, keeping his back to her, removed the tow-rope, and stowed it away in his bug. She wondered whether it was tact or yokelish indifference.

Her father spoke for the first time since the Galahad of the tin bug had come: "How much do you think we ought to give this fellow?"

Now of all the cosmic problems yet unsolved, not cancer nor the future of poverty are the fl.u.s.tering questions, but these twain: Which is worse, not to wear evening clothes at a party at which you find every one else dressed, or to come in evening clothes to a house where, it proves, they are never worn? And: Which is worse, not to tip when a tip has been expected; or to tip, when the tip is an insult?

In discomfort of spirit and wetness of ankles Claire shuddered, "Oh dear, I don't believe he expects us to pay him. He seems like an awfully independent person. Maybe we'd offend him if we offered----"

"The only reasonable thing to be offended at in this vale of tears is not being offered money!"

"Just the same---- Oh dear, I'm so tired. But good little Claire will climb out and be diplomatic."

She pinched her forehead, to hold in her cracking brain, and wabbled out into new scenes of mud and wetness, but she came up to the young man with the most rain-washed and careless of smiles. "Won't you come back and meet my father? He's terribly grateful to you--as I am. And may we---- You've worked so hard, and about saved our lives. May I pay you for that labor? We're really much indebted----"

"Oh, it wasn't anything. Tickled to death if I could help you."

He heartily shook hands with her father, and he droned, "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Uh."

"Boltwood."

"Mr. Boltwood. My name is Milt--Milton Daggett. See you have a New York license on your car. We don't see but mighty few of those through here.

Glad I could help you."

"Ah yes, Mr. Daggett." Mr. Boltwood was uninterestedly fumbling in his money pocket. Behind Milt Daggett, Claire shook her head wildly, rattling her hands as though she were playing castanets. Mr. Boltwood shrugged. He did not understand. His relations with young men in cheap raincoats were entirely monetary. They did something for you, and you paid them--preferably not too much--and they ceased to be. Whereas Milt Daggett respectfully but stolidly continued to be, and Mr. Henry Boltwood's own daughter was halting the march of affairs by asking irrelevant questions:

"Didn't we see you back in--what was that village we came through back about twelve miles?"

"Schoenstrom?" suggested Milt.

"Yes, I think that was it. Didn't we pa.s.s you or something? We stopped at a garage there, to change a tire."

"I don't think so. I was in town, though, this morning. Say, uh, did you and your father grab any eats----"

"A----"

"I mean, did you get dinner there?"

"No. I wish we had!"

"Well say, I didn't either, and--I'd be awfully glad if you folks would have something to eat with me now."