on the highway. She
felt a futile but exhilarating surge of victory.

Her hand trembled when she switched off the automatic-drive. The wheel
under her hands began to vibrate. The car was sensitive to her control.
It was alive and deadly and hurtling like a rocket.

I can't outrun him now! she thought. He has too much speed!

... I've got to get off the highway. I've got to take a side road toward
the mountain. There'll be curves and twists and turns. They will cut his
speed down. Maybe I can out drive him.

Side roads slipped by to her right and left.

She prepared to brake the car for the next cut-off slot.

It appeared far ahead; a dark slit on the left outlined by her rushing
headlights.

She depressed the brake; the tires screamed.

The car skittered and fishtailed. She clung desperately to the wheel,
battling the great chunk of metal with every ounce of her tiny body.

And somehow the car hurtled through the slot, across the other half of
the highway, onto the hard topped, farm-to-market road that climbed
toward the distant crest.

Walt's car, braking shrilly, hurtled past her and was lost in the night.

Julia stamped the accelerator viciously. Her car plunged forward.

Lonely trees and brush stood like decaying phantoms in the splatter of
her headlights. Far ahead, winking down the mountain, she saw the
headlights of another car--crawling toward her slowly, like twin fire
flies, indolent after a night of pleasure. The road was pitted, and the
car beneath her jolted.

It was then in the loneliness of the seldom traveled farm road that she
noticed the gasoline gauge.

The gas remaining in the tank could not be sufficient to take her
another ten miles. The peg rested solidly on the empty mark to the left.

She began to cry.

* * * * *

The tears almost blinded her; she jerked the car back, just in time,
from a ditch. She held it toward the fearful darkness ahead. Dawn that
purpled the east seemed lost forever from this road and this life.

The road climbed slowly; then steeply.

Behind her now the bright lights like great flames crept closer, burning
everything. The lights had pursued her for only half an hour; it seemed
an eternity. The road began a great bend around the first sharp thrust
of mountain. She slowed.

The headlights were gaining.

She wanted to give up.

The motor coughed.

Walt was almost upon her; elation throbbed in his being. He had b