But suppose the engine overheated, ran out of water? Anxiety twanged at
her nerves. And the deep distinctive ruts were changing to a complex
pattern, like the rails in a city switchyard. She picked out the track
of the one motor car that had been through here recently. It was marked
with the swastika tread of the rear tires. That track was her friend;
she knew and loved the driver of a car she had never seen in her life.
She was very tired. She wondered if she might not stop for a moment.
Then she came to an upslope. The car faltered; felt indecisive beneath
her. She jabbed down the accelerator. Her hands pushed at the steering
wheel as though she were pushing the car. The engine picked up, sulkily
kept going. To the eye, there was merely a rise in the rolling ground,
but to her anxiety it was a mountain up which she--not the engine, but
herself--pulled this bulky mass, till she had reached the top, and was
safe again--for a second. Still there was no visible end of the mud.
In alarm she thought, "How long does it last? I can't keep this up.
I--Oh!"
The guiding tread of the previous car was suddenly lost in a mass of
heaving, bubble-scattered mud, like a batter of black dough. She fairly
picked up the car, and flung it into that welter, through it, and back
into the reappearing swastika-marked trail.
Her father spoke: "You're biting your lips. They'll bleed, if you don't
look out. Better stop and rest."
"Can't! No bottom to this mud. Once stop and lose momentum--stuck for
keeps!"
She had ten more minutes of it before she reached a combination of
bridge and culvert, with a plank platform above a big tile drain. With
this solid plank bottom, she could stop. Silence came roaring down as
she turned the switch. The bubbling water in the radiator steamed about
the cap. Claire was conscious of tautness of the cords of her neck in
front; of a pain at the base of her brain. Her father glanced at her
curiously. "I must be a wreck. I'm sure my hair is frightful," she
thought, but forgot it as she looked at him. His face was unusually
pale. In the tumult of activity he had been betrayed into letting the
old despondent look blur his eyes and sag his mouth. "Must get on," she
determined.
Claire was dainty of habit. She detested untwisted hair, ripped gloves,
muddy shoes. Hesitant as a cat by a puddle, she stepped down on the
bridge. Even on these planks, the mud was three inches thick. It
squidged about her low, spatted shoes. "Eeh!" she squeaked.