Cabin Fever (Wild West Adventure). B. M. Bower

the driveway.

      There was a risk, of course, in coasting out on to the street with no lights, but he took it cheerfully, planning to dodge if he saw the lights of another car coming. It pleased him to remember that the street inclined toward the bay. He rolled past the house without a betraying sound, dipped over the curb to the asphalt, swung the car townward, and coasted nearly half a block with the ignition switch on before he pushed up the throttle, let in his clutch, and got the answering chug-chug of the engine. With the lights on full he went purring down the street in the misty fog, pleased with himself and his mission.

Chapter Four. Head South and Keep Going

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      At a lunch wagon down near the water front, Bud stopped and bought two “hot dog” sandwiches and a mug of hot coffee boiled with milk in it and sweetened with three cubes of sugar. “O-oh, boy!” he ejaculated gleefully when he set his teeth into biscuit and hot hamburger. Leaning back luxuriously in the big car, he ate and drank until he could eat and drink no more. Then, with a bag of bananas on the seat beside him, he drove on down to the mole, searching through the drizzle for the big gum sign which Foster had named. Just even with the coughing engine of a waiting through train he saw it, and backed in against the curb, pointing the car’s radiator toward the mainland. He had still half an hour to wait, and he buttoned on the curtains of the car, since a wind from across the bay was sending the drizzle slantwise; moreover it occurred to him that Foster would not object to the concealment while they were passing through Oakland. Then he listlessly ate a banana while he waited.

      The hoarse siren of a ferryboat bellowed through the murk. Bud started the engine, throttled it down to his liking, and left it to warm up for the flight. He ate another banana, thinking lazily that he wished he owned this car. For the first time in many a day his mind was not filled and boiling over with his trouble. Marie and all the bitterness she had come to mean to him receded into the misty background of his mind and hovered there, an indistinct memory of something painful in his life.

      A street car slipped past, bobbing down the track like a duck sailing over ripples. A local train clanged down to the depot and stood jangling its bell while it disgorged passengers for the last boat to the City whose wall of stars was hidden behind the drizzle and the clinging fog. People came straggling down the sidewalk—not many, for few had business with the front end of the waiting trains. Bud pushed the throttle up a little. His fingers dropped down to the gear lever, his foot snuggled against the clutch pedal.

      Feet came hurrying. Two voices mumbled together. “Here he is,” said one. “That’s the number I gave him.” Bud felt some one step hurriedly upon the running board. The tonneau door was yanked open. A man puffed audibly behind him. “Yuh ready?” Foster’s voice hissed in Bud’s ear.

      “R’aring to go.” Bud heard the second man get in and shut the door, and he jerked the gear lever into low. His foot came gently back with the clutch, and the car slid out and away.

      Foster settled back on the cushions with a sigh. The other man was fumbling the side curtains, swearing under his breath when his fingers bungled the fastenings.

      “Everything all ready?” Foster’s voice was strident with anxiety.

      “Sure thing.”

      “Well, head south—any road you know best. And keep going, till I tell you to stop. How’s the oil and gas?”

      “Full up. Gas enough for three hundred miles. Extra gallon of oil in the car. What d’yah want—the speed limit through town?”

      “Nah. Side streets, if you know any. They might get quick action and telephone ahead.”

      “Leave it to me, brother.”

      Bud did not know for sure, never having been pursued; but it seemed to him that a straightaway course down a main street where other cars were scudding homeward would be the safest route, because the simplest. He did not want any side streets in his, he decided—and maybe run into a mess of street-improvement litter, and have to back trail around it. He held the car to a hurry-home pace that was well within the law, and worked into the direct route to Hayward. He sensed that either Foster or his friend turned frequently to look back through the square celluloid window, but he did not pay much attention to them, for the streets were greasy with wet, and not all drivers would equip with four skid chains. Keeping sharp lookout for skidding cars and unexpected pedestrians and street-car crossings and the like fully occupied Bud.

      For all that, an occasional mutter came unheeded to his ears, the closed curtains preserving articulate sounds like room walls.

      “He’s all right,” he heard Foster whisper once. “Better than if he was in on it.” He did not know that Foster was speaking of him.

      “—if he gets next,” the friend mumbled.

      “Ah, quit your worrying,” Foster grunted. “The trick’s turned; that’s something.”

      Bud was under the impression that they were talking about father-in-law, who had called Foster a careless hound; but whether they were or not concerned him so little that his own thoughts never flagged in their shuttle-weaving through his mind. The mechanics of handling the big car and getting the best speed out of her with the least effort and risk, the tearing away of the last link of his past happiness and his grief; the feeling that this night was the real parting between him and Marie, the real stepping out into the future; the future itself, blank beyond the end of this trip, these were quite enough to hold Bud oblivious to the conversation of strangers.

      At dawn they neared a little village. Through this particular county the road was unpaved and muddy, and the car was a sight to behold. The only clean spot was on the windshield, where Bud had reached around once or twice with a handful of waste and cleaned a place to see through. It was raining soddenly, steadily, as though it always had rained and always would rain.

      Bud turned his face slightly to one side. “How about stopping; I’ll have to feed her some oil—and it wouldn’t hurt to fill the gas tank again. These heavy roads eat up a lot of extra power. What’s her average mileage on a gallon, Foster?”

      “How the deuce should I know?” Foster snapped, just coming out of a doze.

      “You ought to know, with your own car—and gas costing what it does.”

      “Oh!—ah—what was it you asked?” Foster yawned aloud. “I musta been asleep.”

      “I guess you musta been, all right,” Bud grunted. “Do you want breakfast here, or don’t you? I’ve got to stop for gas and oil; that’s what I was asking?”

      The two consulted together, and finally told Bud to stop at the first garage and get his oil and gas. After that he could drive to a drug store and buy a couple of thermos bottles, and after that he could go to the nearest restaurant and get the bottles filled with black coffee, and have lunch put up for six people. Foster and his friend would remain in the car.

      Bud did these things, revising the plan to the extent of eating his own breakfast at the counter in the restaurant while the lunch was being prepared in the kitchen.

      From where he sat he could look across at the muddy car standing before a closed millinery-and-drygoods store. It surely did not look much like the immaculate machine he had gloated over the evening before, but it was a powerful, big brute of a car and looked its class in every line. Bud was proud to drive a car like that. The curtains were buttoned down tight, and he thought amusedly of the two men huddled inside, shivering and hungry, yet refusing to come in and get warmed up with a decent breakfast. Foster, he thought, must certainly be scared of his wife, if he daren’t show himself in this little rube town. For the first time Bud had a vagrant suspicion that Foster had not told quite all there was to tell about this trip. Bud wondered now if Foster was not going to meet a “Jane” somewhere in the South. That terrifying Mann Act would account for his caution much better than would the business deal of which Foster had hinted.

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