Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
F
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<p>"Yes. She's the captain of the boat. I'm just the engineer."
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<p>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?"
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<div class="poem">
<p>"Oh, it wasn't anything. Tickled to death if I could help you."
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<div class="poem">
<p>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?"
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<p>No, Milt did not strike him to earth. He insisted feebly, "Nice clothes she's got, though."
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<div class="poem">
<p>Minnie Rauskukle, plump, hearty Minnie, heiress to the general store, gave evidence by bridling and straightening her pigeon-like body that she was aware of Milt behind her. He did not speak to her. He ducked into the door of the Old Home Poolroom and Restaurant.
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<div class="poem">
<p>But there was plenty of gas. There was no discernible reason why the car should not go. She started the engine. It ran for half a minute and quit. All the plugs showed sparks. No wires were detached in the distributor. There was plenty of water, and the oil was not clogged. And that ended Claire's knowledge of the inside of a motor.
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<div class="poem">
<p>"Usually? Do you mean to say that you leave that hole there in the road right along—that people keep on trying to avoid it and get stuck as I was? Oh! If I were an official——"
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<p>"Why, lovesoul, d' you suppose I'd be talking up as brash as this to a bid, stwong man like oo if I didn't have a gun handy?"
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<p>"Mayn't I gi—lend you these two that I happen to have along? I've finished them, and so has father, I think."
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<p>As they reached the foot of the stairs, the old one, the night clerk leaned across the desk and, in a voice that took the whole office into the conversation, quizzed, "Come from New York, eh? Well, you're quite a ways from home."
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<p>Instantly, the dismay of it rushing at her, she saw the end of the patch of gravel. The road ahead was a wet black smear, criss-crossed with ruts. The car shot into a morass of prairie gumbo--which is mud mixed with tar, fly-paper, fish glue, and well-chewed, chocolate-covered caramels. When cattle get into gumbo, the farmers send for the stump-dynamite and try blasting.
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<div class="poem">
<p>"Of course. We haven't laid an eye on him, along the road. He must have gotten into Fargo long before we did. Now tomorrow I think——"
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<div class="poem">
<p>Lest he encounter her in the streets, he always camped to the eastward of the town at which she spent the night. After dusk, when she was likely to end the day's drive in the first sizable place, he hid his bug in an alley and, like a spy after the papers, sneaked into each garage to see if her car was there.
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<div class="poem">
<p>As the car stood outside taking on gas, a man flapped up, spelled out the New York license, looked at Claire and her father, and inquired, "Quite a ways from home, aren't you?"
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