"At least they're not rude!" And she meant that he was rude.

"They're absolutely trivial. They shut off----"

"They shut off rain and snow and dirt, and I still fail to see the
picturesqueness of dirt! Good-by!"

She had driven off, without looking back. She was heading for Seattle
and the Pacific Ocean at forty miles an hour--and they had no engagement
to meet either in Seattle or in the Pacific.

Before Milt went on he completed a task on which he had decided the
night before while he had meditated on the tailored impertinence of Jeff
Saxton's gray suit. The task was to give away the Best Suit, that
stolid, very black covering which at Schoenstrom had seemed suitable
either to a dance or to the Y. P. S. C. E. The recipient was Mr. Pinky
Parrott, who gave in return a history of charity and high souls.

Milt did not listen. He was wondering, now that they had started, where
they had started for. Certainly not for Seattle! Why not stop and see
Pinky's gold-mine? Maybe he did have one. Even Pinky had to tell the
truth sometimes. With a good popular gold-mine in his possession, Milt
could buy quantities of clothes like Jeff Saxton's, and----

"And," he reflected, "I can learn as good manners as his in one hour,
with a dancing lesson thrown in. If I didn't, I'd sue the professor!"

CHAPTER XIX

THE NIGHT OF ENDLESS PINES

On the edge of Kootenai Canyon, feeling more like an aviator than like
an automobilist, Claire had driven, and now, nearing Idaho, she had
entered a national forest. She was delayed for hours, while she tried to
change a casing, after a blow-out when the spare tire was deflated. She
wished for Milt. She would never see him again. She was sorry. He hadn't
meant----

But hang it, she panted, if he admired her at all, he'd be here now and
get on this per-fect-ly beast-ly casing, over which she had been
laboring for a dozen years; and she was simply too ridiculously tired;
and was there any respectful way of keeping Henry B. from beaming in
that benevolent manner while she was killing herself; and look at those
fingernails; and--oh, drrrrrrat that casing!

To make the next town, after this delay, she had to drive for hours by
night through the hulking pines of the national forest. It was her first
long night drive.

A few claims, with log cabins of recent settlers, once or twice the
shack of a forest-ranger, a telephone in a box by the road or a rough R.
F. D. box nailed to a pine trun