Dutch Courage and Other Stories by Jack London

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Both men studied it carefully, then looked at each other.

"We've got to," said Davies.

"And we're going to," Wemple said, shoving his rival aside in comradely
fashion and taking the post of danger at the wheel. "You're just as good
as I at the wheel, Davies," he explained. "But you're a better shot.
Your job's cut out to go back and hold off any Greasers that show up."

Davies took a rifle and strolled back with so ominous an air that the
lone cavalryman put spurs to his horse and fled. Mrs. Morgan was helped
out and sent plodding and tottering unaided on her way to the end of the
sand stretch. Miss Drexel and Juanita joined Charley in spreading the
coats and robes on the sand and in gathering and spreading small
branches, brush, and armfuls of a dry, brittle shrub. But all three
ceased from their exertions to watch Wemple as he shot the car backward
down the V and up. The car seemed first to stand on one end, then on the
other, and to reel drunkenly and to threaten to turn over into the
sump-hole when its right front wheel fell into the air where the road
had ceased to be. But the hind wheels bit and climbed the grade and out.

Without pause, gathering speed down the perilous slope, Wemple came
ahead and up, gaining fifty feet of sand over the previous failure. More
of the alluvial soil of the road had dropped out at the bad place; but
he took the V in reverse, overhung the front wheel as before, and from
the top came ahead again. Four times he did this, gaining each time, but
each time knocking a bigger hole where the road fell out, until Miss
Drexel begged him not to try again.

He pointed to a squad of horsemen coming at a gallop along the road a
mile in the rear, and took the V once again in reverse.

"If only we had more stuff," Drexel groaned to his sister, as he threw
down a meager, hard-gathered armful of the dry and brittle shrub, and as
Wemple once more, with rush and roar, shot down the V.

For an instant it seemed that the great car would turn over into the
sump, but the next instant it was past. It struck the bottom of the
hollow a mighty wallop, and bounced and upended to the steep pitch of
the climb. Miss Drexel, seized by inspiration or desperation, with a
quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and,
looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers, ran along
the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving
wheels. Almost, but not quite, did the car stop, then, gathering way,
with the others running alongside and shoving, it emerged on the hard
road.

While they tossed the robes and coats and Miss Drexel's skirt into the
bottom of the car and got Mrs. Morgan on board, Davies overtook them.

"Down on the bottom!--all of you!" he shouted, as he gained the running
board and the machine sprang away. A scattering of shots came from the
rear.

"Whose business is to live!--hunch down!" Davies yelled in Wemple's ear,
accompanying the instruction with an open-handed blow on the shoulder.

"Live yourself," Wemple grumbled as he obediently hunched. "Get your
head down. You're exposing yourself."

The pursuit lasted but a little while, and died away in an occasional
distant shot.

"They've quit," Davies announced. "It never entered their stupid heads
that they could have caught us on Aliso Hill."

* * * * *

"It can't be done," was Charley Drexel's quick judgment of youth, as the
machine stopped and they surveyed the acute-angled turn on the stiff
up-grade of Aliso. Beneath was the swift-running river.

"Get out everybody!" Wemple commanded. "Up-side, all of you, if you
don't want the car to turn over on you. Spread traction wherever she
needs it."

"Shoot her ahead, or back--she can't stop," Davies said quietly, from
the outer edge of the road, where he had taken position. "The earth's
crumbling away from under the tires every second she stands still."

"Get out from under, or she'll be on top of you," Wemple ordered, as he
went ahead several yards.

But again, after the car rested a minute, the light, dry earth began to
crack and crumble away from under the tires, rolling in a miniature
avalanche down the steep declivity into the water. And not until Wemple
had backed fifty yards down the narrow road did he find solid resting
for the car. He came ahead on foot and examined the acute angle formed
by the two zig-zags. Together with Davies he planned what was to be
done.

"When you come you've got to come a-humping," Davies advised. "If you
stop anywhere for more than seconds, it's good night, and the walking
won't be fine."

"She's full of fight, and she can do it. See that hard formation right
there on the inside wall. It couldn't have come at a better spot. If I
don't make her hind wheels climb half way up it, we'll start walking
about a second thereafter."

"She's a two-fisted piece of machinery," Davies encouraged. "I know her
kind. If she can't do it, no machine can that was ever made. Am I right,
Beth?"

"She's a regular, spunky she-devil," Miss Drexel laughed agreement. "And
so are the pair of you--er--of the male persuasion, I mean."

Miss Drexel had never seemed so fascinating to either of them as she was
then, in the excitement quite unconscious of her abbreviated costume,
her brown hair flying, her eyes sparkling, her lips smiling. Each man
caught the other in that moment's pause to look, and each man sighed to
the other and looked frankly into each other's eyes ere he turned to the
work at hand.

Wemple came up with his usual rush, but it was a gauged rush; and Davies
took the post of danger, the outside running board, where his weight
would help the broad tires to bite a little deeper into the treacherous
surface. If the road-edge crumbled away it was inevitable that he would
be caught under the car as it rolled over and down to the river.

It was ahead and reverse, ahead and reverse, with only the briefest of
pauses in which to shift the gears. Wemple backed up the hard formation
on the inside bank till the car seemed standing on end, rushed ahead
till the earth of the outer edge broke under the front tires and
splashed in the water. Davies, now off, and again on the running board
when needed, accompanied the car in its jerky and erratic progress,
tossing robes and coats under the tires, calling instructions to Drexel
similarly occupied on the other side, and warning Miss Drexel out of the
way.

"Oh, you Merry Olds, you Merry Olds, you Merry Olds," Wemple muttered
aloud, as if in prayer, as he wrestled the car about the narrow area,
gaining sometimes inches in pivoting it, sometimes fetching back up the
inner wall precisely at the spot previously attained, and, once, having
the car, with the surface of the roadbed under it, slide bodily and
sidewise, two feet down the road.

The clapping of Miss Drexel's hands was the first warning Davies
received that the feat was accomplished, and, swinging on to the running
board, he found the car backing in the straight-away up the next zig-zag
and Wemple still chanting ecstatically, "Oh, you Merry Olds, you Merry
Olds!"

There were no more grades nor zigzags between them and Tampico, but, so
narrow was the primitive road, two miles farther were backed before
space was found in which to turn around. One thing of importance
did lie between them and Tampico--namely the investing lines of the
constitutionalists. But here, at noon, fortune favored in the form of
three American soldiers of fortune, operators of machine guns, who had
fought the entire campaign with Villa from the beginning of the advance
from the Texan border. Under a white flag, Wemple drove the car across
the zone of debate into the federal lines, where good fortune, in the
guise of an ubiquitous German naval officer, again received them.

"I think you are nearly the only Americans left in Tampico," he told
them. "About all the rest are lying out in the Gulf on the different
warships. But at the Southern Hotel there are several, and the situation
seems quieter."

As they got out at the Southern, Davies laid his hand on the car and
murmured, "Good old girl!" Wemple followed suit. And Miss Drexel,
engaging both men's eyes and about to say something, was guilty of a
sudden moisture in her own eyes that made her turn to the car with a
caressing hand and repeat, "Good old girl!"

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