if that’s what you’re out to prove. You’re good-looking and you’re smooth, and I’d be eating out of your hand in a minute if it weren’t that just at the moment I happen to be looking in the other direction—back over my shoulder.”
She relaxed a little. “That’s partly what I’m talking about, darling. I want to go with you. Look. I have most of my clothes in five bags in the back of the car, and a little odd change I’ve managed to save here and there, and this Lincoln with fancy leather upholstery and a surprising power plant under the hood, in case you’d care to investigate it. And I might be a little surprising too, if you’d take the trouble to try to become acquainted with me. I’m not really as dumb as you think I am, to be going at you this way. It’s just that I haven’t got time to follow any traditional feminine tactics. Bayou City is too near. And I’m not always too conventional, anyway. I get bored with it—”
“Dinah, cut it out,” I said uncomfortably.
“I want to go with you.”
“In God’s name, why?”
“Well, to spring something entirely new, maybe it’s biological. But that’s not all of it. Jack! Will you get this car off the highway and stop the damned thing? I can’t talk to you while you’re driving. It’s like trying to talk to a machine. Get it off the road. Jack! Please!”
I couldn’t argue with her and drive at the same time. There was no telling what she might do, and I was convinced by now that she was capable of anything. I saw a dirt road up ahead, leading off into the timber on the right, and slowed to swing into it. Maybe I could talk or shake some sense into her.
Nineteen
I stopped the car and looked around at her in the dim light of the instrument panel. She remained curled up in the corner of the seat, staring moodily at me with the long cigarette in her fingers like some precocious and highly ornamental child.
“It’s all right. I’m not going to attack,” she said. “And you could probably defend yourself. I weigh a hundred and ten.”
“Now, look, Dinah—” I began.
“You can drop the fatherly attitude. You’re twenty-seven, and I’m twenty-four.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head. “You’re acting like some nitwit high-school girl, and it doesn’t fit you.”
“I know. I know,” she said impatiently. “For heaven’s sake, darling, I know the manual of basic maneuver just as well as the next one. I could sprain my ankle. And I just adore Hemingway. And I just love to putter around in a kitchen. And I don’t think for a minute that people really have to go to expensive places to have a good time, do you, dear? But, for the love of heaven, don’t you see there isn’t time for that? Can’t we dispense with that bird-with-a-broken-wing routine? Aren’t we old enough, and intelligent enough—”
“But Dinah.” I objected, “what the devil are you after?” I might as well be dumb to the last. I couldn’t think of anything else.
“Now who’s stupid?”
“All right,” I said. “But why? What for?”
“Does there have to be a reason? Is it like geometry?”
“But for God’s sake,” I protested. “Of all the men in the world, why some crooked ex-deputy sheriff on the run from the cops?”
“Well, if you really think we have time for me to draw a diagram, it’s because I happen to be crazy about you. Or had you already managed to guess, from some subtle little hint I’ve given you?” She laughed, but there wasn’t much fun in it. “It’s just because I want you more than I ever wanted anybody or anything in my life. Right from the moment you walked into that living room which the cultured and sardonic Mr. Buford provides for me and his gun collection. Before you opened your mouth and started to talk, I thought you were just some magnificent thug—which wasn’t too bad in itself, for I do have all of a normal, wholesome girls interest in thugs. And then I began to see a lot of other things about you. Imagination. Daring. And excitement. Always excitement. Don’t you understand, Jack? To me you’re the world’s only defense against dullness. You’re the personification of excitement.”
“The personification of horse saliva,” I said roughly. “Stop acting like a high-school girl. I told you it didn’t fit you. It’s not your type.”
“I know it sounds idiotic