Photoplay (Feb-Sep 1917)

164 The Gas Girl (Continued from page 60) Pennsylvania is a grand little Commonwealth except that life there is just one eighty per cent grade after another ; so that when your bus is suffering with sextuple pneumonia and St. Vitas dance, this gets to be considerable in your young life. Well, Daff had just strangled up a couple of miles of landscape, and had stopped to read a signpost by the last of the daylight, when three bums popped out of the bushes by the side of the road, and one of them covered her with a gun and told her to get out. Daff had her own gun in her holster around her waist, but it might as well have been at home for all the chance she had to use it. She had left her engine running and now when the man with the gun backed her up against the sign post, the other two jumped into the car. The one at the wheel yelled to the third, and he climbed up behind Daff's duffle and off they went, he covering her until they were out of sight around a curve. Blooie ! There she was amid another beautiful evening glow and with her whole trip gone up in smoke in two minutes ! She just sat down on a log by the road side and wept upon that rolling. vista. It was pretty tough, with New York, as you might say, almost in sight. For awhile she didn't know what to do. It was the Missouri thing over again only worse. She was hungry and tired, and she couldn't see a house from where she was. She knew it was miles back to the nearest burg, and after ten hours of massage in that vibrator of hers she wasn't any George Payson Weston. But there was nothing else to do, so she started back. And sure enough, she hadn't gone two miles when along came little Rollo in his cerise boneshaker. He pulled up squealing, and when he found out what had happened he was all broken up. Sure, like the Germans at the Irish rebellion. Here she was flat-footed at last, and he'd won his point. "Well, I'm awful sorry for your sake, dear," he said, getting out of the machine and going to where she stood in the road. "This foolishness is over at last, and I'm here waiting for you just as I said I'd be." He was real gentle, and she began to cry again. I guess he looked pretty good to her then, big and faithful and with a large acreage of dusty coat front to burrow into. "You've done your best for that slave driver Brant, and now I want to take care of you," he went on. "Jiut I don't want to be taken care of," she sobbed, "I w-want my car!" "Yes, but I haven't a chance in a million to find it now. It's dark already, and besides I'm not going off to leave you again like I did in Missouri. One scare like tluu is enough. And for God's sake, don't cr\, Daff I I can't stand it!" She didn't say anything, couldn't 1 guess, and he went on. "This trip's done now darling, thank God! and I want you to listen to me. I've done everything I could to spare you, I've been faithful, and patient and reasonable. You've served your time and so have I, and now let's forget it and get married and be happy. Even Brant couldn't roar after what's happened tonight." "Here, where are you going?" Daff unlimbered her gat for the first time on that trip, and pointed it straight for the place where Rollo was hungriest. "I'm taking your car. Do you think 1 am going to be beaten now? I'm going to get to New York if I have to commit murder to do it. You stand where you are auvl don't move or I'll .shoot." Rollo told me afterwards that he didn't take any chances at all after one look at her eyes. "I'll get you for larceny, Daff, in the next town," he said, thinking of the first thing he could. "You do, and it's the last time you'll ever see me." She was in the car now and the engine was going, but .she kept him covered. Rollo caved in, anger, disappointment, everything washed out in his admiration for her brainy gameness. "Daff you're wonderful, you're perfect ! I'm mad about you. Nobody ever beat me before, but you've done it, and you can beat me for the rest of my life, if you'll only marrv me! Will you marry me Daff?" "Of course not ! Don't i)e silly ! The machine was headed down grade, and Daff started it with a jump into second speed, watching Rollo to see he didn't try to flip on behind. He didn't. He was wrecked, ruined, done. Life held nothing more for him. After