The Adam Chaser
9781465670908
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Halfway up a long cañon that cut a six-mile gash through rugged mountains thinly pock-marked with prospect holes, the radiator cap of John Abington’s car blew off with a pop like amateur home-brew. For a matter of a minute, perhaps, that particular brand of automobile developed a lively hot-water geyser. Followed a brief period of steaming, and after that it stalled definitely and set square in the trail which ran through deep sandy gravel and rock rubble—a hot car and a sulky one, if you know what I mean. Abington harried the starter with vicious jabs of his heel, then crawled reluctantly out into the blistering wind which felt as if it were driving down the sunlight with sharp needle points of heat that stung and smarted the skin where they struck. The canteens were buried deep under much camp paraphernalia, a circumstance which gave occasion for a few minutes of eloquent monologue. Curiously, the driver’s vituperation was directed neither at the car nor the wind nor the heat, but at an absent individual whom he called “Shorty”—and at another named Pete. Considerable luggage was shifted before the canteens were finally excavated from the floor of the tonneau; both canteens, because the first one was so completely empty that it made no sound when Abington impatiently shook it. He was standing beside the car, mechanically sloshing a pint or so of water in the second grimy, flat-bottomed canteen, when a dust-covered roadster came coasting down the four-per-cent grade of the cañon half a mile or so away. He glanced at the approaching car, set the canteen in the sand and helped himself to a cigarette from a silver-trimmed leather case. Abington was leaning against the rear fender in the narrow bit of shade when the roadster came down upon him, slowed with a squealing of dry brakes and stopped perforce. In the rocks and deep sand that bordered the road a caterpillar truck could scarcely have driven around the stalled car.
