Sallys in the Alley | Page 8

which, when you come to
think of it, is really quite surprising. Except that the real article doesn't
show such good color sense as the average painting does. Yellows and
purples and reds and various other violent subunits of the spectrum are
splashed all over the sky, in a monumental exhibition of bad taste. They
keep moving and blurring and changing around, like the color movies
they show in insane asylums to keep the idiots quiet.
After this gaudy display is over the shadows move in, swift and blue
and silent, and then the place resembles a rundown graveyard slightly
haunted by rattlesnakes and battered beer cans. It is quite uncanny.
The highway that Arne had marked in red on the maps swooped and
curved and coiled casually through draws, canyons, barrancas and such
other natural barriers as cluttered up the landscape, and Doan drove
along it in sort of a mild coma. The sun had rippled the highway
surface just enough to give the car a sleepy, rocking motion that was
very pleasant. Doan was driving at exactly thirty-five miles an hour.
Not entirely from choice. Someone had installed a governor on the
Cadillac. It wouldn't go any faster.
Doan and Carstairs and the Cadillac were all alone and had been for the
last two hours. There hadn't been any signs of civilization at all, not
even an abandoned gas station. No other cars had passed him going in
either direction. It was as though the highway had decided to run off
somewhere at random on an errand of its own.
Doan saw the figure when it was almost a mile ahead of him, standing
beside the road with the shadows pooling deep around its feet. It looked
like a totem pole sawed off at top and bottom, and then as he rolled
closer it moved and jiggled its arm, semaphore fashion, and became
human.
Doan slowed up. The desert at dusk is not a one hundred percent safe
place to pick up hitchhikers. Quite often they rap you on the head and
throw you in a ditch where, after suitable curing, your skull makes a
nice nesting place for scorpions. However, the prospect didn't bother

Doan much. He knew from some spectacular experiences in that line
that he was difficult to murder.
The figure, on closer inspection, turned out to be a female one complete
in all its component parts and encased in a neat blue slack suit and
possessing blond hair done up precisely in a blue snood. It was a young
female figure and had an air of coordinated and trained determination.
Doan pulled up beside her. She opened the door opposite him before he
had a chance to, and leaned in the car and looked at him. Her features
were even and assembled with good taste, and she had earnest, deep
blue eyes.
"Hello," said Doan mildly. "Would you like a ride?"
"What's your name?"
"Doan," said Doan.
"I'm Harriet Hathaway, and I'm on my way to Fort Des Moines to join
the WAACs and serve my country."
"Happy to meet you," said Doan. "Would you like a ride?"
"Do you propose to make improper advances to me, Mr. Doan?"
"Well, I hadn't thought of it," Doan told her. "But if you really insist I
can probably turn up something in that line."
"I don't insist! And if you have any such ideas I advise you to discard
them."
"Plunk," said Doan. "Gurgle-gurgle. They're discarded. Would you like
a ride?"
"Yes, I would. Don't bother to move, please. I can handle this." She
picked up a small, dark blue bag and placed it precisely in the middle
of the front seat. She got in and sat on the far side of it and closed the
door efficiently. "I'm ready."

Doan started the car.
"If you'd use the clutch properly the gears wouldn't grate that way,"
Harriet Hathaway informed him. '
"No doubt you're right," said Doan.
"Men are very nasty beasts."
"Aren't they, though?"
"I've just gone through a singularly unpleasant experience with one."
"A fate worse than death?" Doan asked.
"What? No! I'm quite capable of protecting myself from anything like
that. I'm the woman's golf champion of Talamedas County."
"Oh," said Doan.
"I was also the runner-up in the finals of the Basin City National Tennis
Tourney last year."
"Oh," said Doan.
"I'm also considered the best horsewoman in the Rio Hondo Riding
Club."
"Oh," said Doan.
"This experience had nothing whatsoever to do with--with sex."
"It must have been rather dull," Doan observed.
"It was not! It was beastly! This person offered me a ride in Masterville.
He was wearing dark glasses and I detest people with weak vision, but I
accepted. I was willing to accept any means of transportation to get to