For one heart-stopping moment Minnie’s momentum carried them sliding and slipping right up the grade into the white beam of the express train’s headlight. There was a bedlam of frantic whistles, the scream of steel brakes biting into steel, the hiss of escaping steam.
Then he was bouncing and jouncing along beside the cab. An instantaneous glimpse of the peak-capped engineer. The orange flash of the firebox. A cloud of blinding vapor. He jerked on the chromium reins again. Minnie plunged down the embankment, hit the gully, threw him.
He spraddled her again, hobbled through a briar thicket into a dump of tin cans and rusty wire, circled back to the road.
“Hate to dish it out to you so raw, Minnie. But you got to expect a few scratches at roundup time.”
He might be held up another couple of minutes by the freight; with the time he’d already lost, the chick in the Buick might have a two or three-mile lead. It wouldn’t make any difference until she got to some cross-road where she could switch off and leave him guessing which way she’d gone. But that would only be ten miles away at Port Henry.
Now that he’d had a few seconds to mull it over, he was pretty sure he wasn’t up against any dumb Dora. Except for that spasmodic indication of panic when he’d suggested getting chains out of the trunk compartment, she’d played the part of a typical traveler made grouchy by villainous driving conditions.
The more he chewed on it, the less certain he was that there had been anyone in that luggage compartment of her car. He remembered — now that it was too late — the momentary slowing a few hundred yards before she got to his roadblock. That could have given a man like Medini plenty of opportunity to open one of the rear doors and drop out into the darkness. She’d have closed the door before she came on to answer the Demon’s beckoning “Come ahead.”
Then she’d slowed again, up the road, thirty seconds or so after he waved her through. The time he’d spent questioning her would give an active man enough leeway to circle around in the blackness and cut back to the road so she could pick him up on the north side of the road-block. That would explain the stench of garlic!
The one bloodshot eye of the caboose loomed into view. Minnie hurdled the tracks close enough for the Demon to have grabbed the brakeman’s lantern off the rear end. He bent low behind the windshield, slurring over on the curves, his blinker light winking furiously as he tore along the deserted road.
If that blond bambina was Medini’s gal, there’d be a shortwave in the dash of that Buick. She’d know the news of Bud Wistor’s shooting was being broadcast over the countryside. She’d not be loafing along at thirty-five now, glare ice or not. With any luck, she’d tear into Port Henry ahead of him. There wouldn’t be anyone there to stop her; no troopers, no deputies — and the lone cop wouldn’t be on the job this time of night.
It was even steven she’d get through the sleepy little burg without anyone knowing which of the two possible routes she’d chosen north from the fork at the village green. There wouldn’t be any tire marks to show the Demon which way she’d gone, either. Even if he’d taken pains to notice what kind of treads she had on her 6.50 x 16s, the Port Henry streets were black asphalt. They held the sun’s heat longer than the white concrete of US 9 — and the sleet would melt soon as it hit them.
One route went to Plattsburg and Rouses Point — the border. The other, to Ausable and ski country. She’d told him she was going to Placid. She’d expect him to think she was trying to throw him off the trail. He decided she would head for Placid. Via the Ausable fork.
It wasn’t quite a toss-up. If she laid her course due north, there’d be another ninety miles in which to catch her — and whoever the garlic-eater was, with her. If she took the Placid route, the Demon knew a short cut that would save him five or six miles and possibly — just possibly — bring him back into the highway ahead of her to cut her off.
It wasn’t a road he’d have picked for Minnie to negotiate on a slick night. It was steep, narrow and as full of curves as a spiral staircase. But it was shorter.
He passed an ambulance going full clip — lost the long white car in his rearview mirror within half a mile. Port Henry was a flash-bulb view of huddled stores, one lighted building — the engine house.
A dog raced alongside him as he swerved into the Ausable-Placid road at the green, nipped at his heels. He twisted the throttle grip, startled the dog into a backflip. Three miles out of town, at the foot of the mountain, he swung right, began to climb.
He hobbled and straddle-walked up the steepest part, hopped and joggled to brake his speed on the precipitous down pitch. Halfway down he let Minnie feel her gas on a looping U-curve, realized his mistake the instant he saw the faint amber gleam of a lantern bobbling along in the middle of the narrow road.
A chicken wagon, going to the freight shed at Westport — two ancient Percherons hauling a cart piled high, wide and handsome with crates full of clucking hens.
There was no room to pass, no time if there had been room. He pulled onto the shoulder. There wasn’t any shoulder. It was a ditch, full of water, frozen over. Like stepping on a piece of soap in the bathtub!
Minnie slipped sideways, kept going in spite of the power the Demon poured to her. They went off the road, through the remnants of a low rail fence, into a plowed field saw-toothed with ruts. The Demon took a header.
The farmer on the chicken truck swore at him. The horses shied. The chickens made the night hideous. Minnie backfired like a three-inch rapid fire.
The Demon wiped the blood off his nose, spat out a mouthful of dirt, made sure no bones were broken. Then he lifted Minnie, examined her with more care than he had himself. She had a bent crashguard and a smashed headlight. But her wheels were in alignment. She would take him where he had to go.
He dragged her back to the road, lit out again. When he hit the Placid through highway, he saw a wrecker towing a Model T coupe that had mashed its radiator against a narrow bridge.
“Seen a green ’47 Buick sedan come past, last few minutes?”
“Ain’t seen a single soul,” the garageman answered. “Not for the last half-hour.”
The Demon whacked Minnie’s gas tank. “We’ve caught her,” he whispered. “We’ve got her in a trap.”
But before he’d covered two miles toward Port Henry he was mentally booting himself. The Buick couldn’t have been more’n five or six miles ahead of him before he shot up over that short cut. By now, the girl would have caught up with him, even counting the time he’d saved on the cut-off.
Maybe she’d had a blowout or something. Maybe.
More likely she’d crossed him up, taken the straight road to the border. Nothing for the Demon to do but find a phone and report in.
He didn’t like the idea much. When Cap Matthews found the Buick had slipped through the bottleneck, one goose would be cooked. For keeps!
“Whoa!” He scuffed to a drag stop.
A dirt road branched off at a sharp angle, almost paralleling the highway back toward Port Henry. A signboard at the turn said Trout Landing — Lake Resorts. The signboard glistened.
He dismounted, touched it. It was wet. Spattered slush that even now was freezing, silvering like Christmas tinsel.
The sign was at least twelve feet off the concrete. The car that had splashed slush as far and wide as that must have been taking the turn at fairly high speed. The gruel of sleet and water on the roadbed wasn’t deep enough to have sprayed to that distance if the vehicle had kept to the straightaway.