A thousand deaths by Jack London

all. She’ll put a crimp in it, that’s what she’ll do.”

“It isn’t the hill, it’s the sharp turn of the zig-zag that’s liable to put a crimp in her,”

Davies answered. “That road was never laid out for autos, and no auto has ever

been over it. They steamboated this one up.”

But trouble came before Aliso was reached. Where the road dipped abruptly into a

small jag of hollow that was almost V-shaped, it arose out and became a hundred

yards of deep sand. In order to have speed left for the sand after he cleared the

stiff up-grade of the V, Drexel was compelled to hit the trough of the V with

speed. Wemple clutched Miss Drexel as she was on the verge of being bounced

out. Mrs. Morgan, too solid for such airiness, screamed from the pain of the

bump; and even the imperturbable Juanita fell to crossing herself and uttering

prayers with exceeding rapidity.

The car cleared the crest and encountered the sand, going slower from moment to

moment, slewing and writing and squirming from side to side. The men leaped

out and began shoving. Miss Drexel urged Juanita out and followed. But the car

came to a standstill, and Drexel, looking back and pointing, showed the first sign

of being beaten. Two things he pointed to: a constitutional soldier on horseback a

quarter of a mile in the rear; and a portion of the narrow road that had fallen out

bodily on the far slope of the V.

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75

“Can’t get at this sand unless we go back and try over, and we ditch the car if we

try to back up that.”

The ditch was a huge natural sump-hole, the stagnant surface of which was acrawl

with slime twenty feet beneath.

Davies and Wemple sprang to take the boy’s place.

“You can’t do it,” he urged. “You can get the back wheels past, but right there you

hit that little curve, and if you make it your front wheel will be off the bank. If

you don’t make it, your back wheel’ll be off.”

Both men studied it carefully, then looked at each other.

“We’ve got to,” said Davies.

“And we’re going to,” Wemple said, shoving his rival aside in comradely fashion

and taking the post of danger at the wheel. “You’re just as good as I at the wheel,

Davies,” he explained. “But you’re a better shot. dour job’s cut out to go back and

hold off any Greasers that show up.”

Davies took a rifle and strolled back with so ominous an air that the lone

cavalryman put spurs to his horse and fled. Mrs. Morgan was helped out and sent

plodding and tottering unaided on her way to the end of the sand stretch. Miss

Drexel and Juanita joined Charley in spreading the coats and robes on the sand

and in gathering and spreading small branches, brush, and armfuls of a dry, brittle

shrub. But all three ceased from their exertions to watch Wemple as he shot the

car backward down the V and up. The car seemed first to stand on one end, then

on the other, and to reel drunkenly and to threaten to turn over into the sump-hole

when its right front wheel fell into the air where the road had ceased to be. But the

hind wheels bit and climbed the grade and out.

Without pause, gathering speed down the perilous slope, Wemple came ahead and

up, gaining fifty feet of sand over the previous failure. More of the alluvial soil of

the road had dropped out at the bad place; but he took the V in reverse, overhung

the front wheel as before, and from the top came ahead again. Four times he did

this, gaining each time, but each time knocking a bigger hole where the road fell

out, until Miss Drexel begged him not to try again.

He pointed to a squad of horsemen coming at a gallop along the road a mile in the

rear, and took the V once again in reverse.

“If only we had more stuff,” Drexel groaned to his sister, as he threw down a

meager, hard-gathered armful of the dry and brittle shrub, and as Wemple once

more, with rush and roar, shot down the V.

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76

For an instant it seemed that the great car would turn over into the sump, but the

next instant it was past. It struck the bottom of the hollow a mighty wallop, and

bounced and upended to the steep pitch of the climb. Miss Drexel, seized by

inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy

tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers,

ran along the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving

wheels. Almost, but not quite, did the car stop, then, gathering way, with the

others running alongside and shoving, it emerged on the hard road.

While they tossed the robes and coats and Miss Drexel’s skirt into the bottom of

the car and got Mrs. Morgan on board, Davies overtook them.

“Down on the bottom!—all of you!” he shouted, as he gained the running board

and the machine sprang away. A scattering of shots came from the rear.

“Whose business is to live!—hunch down!” Davies yelled in Wemple’s ear,

accompanying the instruction with an open-handed blow on the shoulder.

“Live yourself,” Wemple grumbled as he obediently hunched. “Get your head

down. You’re exposing yourself.”

The pursuit lasted but a little while, and died away in an occasional distant shot.

“They’ve quit,” Davies announced. “It never entered their stupid heads that they

could have caught us on Aliso Hill.”

“It can’t be done,” was Charley Drexel’s quick judgment of youth, as the machine

stopped and they surveyed the acute-angled turn on the stiff up-grade of Aliso.

Beneath was the swift-running river.

“Get out everybody!” Wemple commanded. “Up-side, all of you, if you don’t

want the car to turn over on you. Spread traction wherever she needs it.”

“Shoot her ahead, or back—she can’t stop,” Davies said quietly, from the outer

edge of the road, where he had taken position. “The earth’s crumbling away from

under the tires every second she stands still.”

“Get out from under, or she’ll be on top of you,” Wemple ordered, as he went

ahead several yards.

But again, after the car rested a minute, the light, dry earth began to crack and

crumble away from under the tires, rolling in a miniature avalanche down the

steep declivity into the water. And not until Wemple had backed fifty yards down

the narrow road did he find solid resting for the car. He came ahead on foot and

examined the acute angle formed by the two zig-zags. Together with Davies he

planned what was to be done.

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“When you come you’ve got to come a-humping,” Davies advised. “If you stop

anywhere for more than seconds, it’s good night, and the walking won’t be fine.”

“She’s full of fight, and she can do it. See that hard formation right there on the

inside wall. It couldn’t have come at a better spot. If I don’t make her hind wheels

climb half way up it, we’ll start walking about a second thereafter.”

“She’s a two-fisted piece of machinery,” Davies encouraged. “I know her kind. If

she can’t do it, no machine can that was ever made. Am I right, Beth?”

“She’s a regular, spunky she-devil,” Miss Drexel laughed agreement. “And so are

the pair of you—er—of the male persuasion, I mean.”

Miss Drexel had never seemed so fascinating to either of them as she was then, in

the excitement quite unconscious of her abbreviated costume, her brown hair

flying, her eyes sparkling, her lips smiling. Each man caught the other in that

moment’s pause to look, and each man sighed to the other and looked frankly into

each other’s eyes ere he turned to the work at hand.

Wemple came up with his usual rush, but it was a gauged rush; and Davies took

the post of danger, the outside running board, where his weight would help the

broad tires to bite a little deeper into the treacherous surface. If the road-edge

crumbled away it was inevitable that he would be caught under the car as it rolled

over and down to the river.

It was ahead and reverse, ahead and reverse, with only the briefest of pauses in

which to shift the gears. Wemple backed up the hard formation on the inside bank

till the car seemed standing on end, rushed ahead till the earth of the outer edge

broke under the front tires and splashed in the water. Davies, now off, and again

on the running board when needed, accompanied the car in its jerky and erratic

progress, tossing robes and coats under the tires, calling instructions to Drexel