By this time Andy was smiling gently to himself.
His wrath had dissolved, and he was humming pleasantly
to himself as he began to pull off the worn shoes
of Buck’s horse.
Young Andrew Lanning lived in the small, hushed world
of his own thoughts. He neither loved nor hated
the people around him. He simply did not see
them. His mother—it was from her that
he inherited the softer qualities of his mind and
his face—had left him a little stock of
books. And though Andy was by no means a reader,
he had at least picked up that dangerous equipment
of fiction which enables a man to dodge reality and
live in his dreams. Those dreams had as little
as possible to do with the daily routine of his life,
and certainly the handling of guns, which his uncle
enforced upon him, was never a part of the future
as Andy saw it.
It was now the late afternoon; the alkali dust in
the road was still in a white light, but the temperature
in the shop had dropped several degrees. The
horse of Buck Heath was shod, and Andy was laying his
tools away for the day when he heard the noise of
an automobile with open muffler coming down the street.
He stepped to the door to watch, and at that moment
a big blue car trundled into view around the bend of
the road. The rear wheels struck a slide of sand
and dust, and skidded; a girl cried out; then the
big machine gathered out of the cloud of dust, and
came toward Andy with a crackling like musketry, and
it was plain that it would leap through Martindale
and away into the country beyond at a bound.
Andy could see now that it was a roadster, low-hung,
ponderous, to keep the road.
Pat Gregg was leaving the saloon; he was on his horse,
but he sat the saddle slanting, and his head was turned
to give the farewell word to several figures who bulged
through the door of the saloon. For that reason,
as well as because of the fumes in his brain, he did
not hear the coming of the automobile. His friends
from the saloon yelled a warning, but he evidently
thought it some jest, as he waved his hand with a
grin of appreciation. The big car was coming,
rocking with its speed; it was too late now to stop
that flying mass of metal.
But the driver made the effort. His brakes shrieked,
and still the car shot on with scarcely abated speed,
for the wheels could secure no purchase in the thin
sand of the roadway. Andy’s heart stood
still in sympathy as he saw the face of the driver
whiten and grow tense. Charles Merchant, the
son of rich John Merchant, was behind the wheel.
Drunken Pat Gregg had taken the warning at last.
He turned in the saddle and drove home his spurs,
but even that had been too late had not Charles Merchant
taken the big chance. At the risk of overturning
the machine he veered it sharply to the left.
It hung for a moment on two wheels. Andy could
count a dozen heartbeats while the plunging car edged
around the horse and shoved between Pat and the wall
of the house—inches on either side.
Yet it must have taken not more than the split part
of a second.
