6:00 P.M. Dress for dinner. Wear the blue chiffon with the pearls.
6:30 P.M. Dinner: two steamed vegetables, broiled fish, skimmed milk, a one-inch piece of chocolate cake.
7:30 P.M. Discuss what you have read
9:30 P.M. Prepare for bed
10:00 P.M. Bed
Amanda looked up at Mrs. Gunston. “Chocolate cake?” she whispered.
A maid walked in, set the four books on a table and left the room. Mrs. Gunston picked up one of them. “This man, this Dr. Montgomery, he wrote this one and he’s coming here. You’re to know something to talk to him about, so you better stop dreaming of cake and get to work.” She turned away with an officious bustle and left the room.
Amanda sat absolutely rigid on a hard little chair and began to read the book by Dr. Henry Raine Montgomery first. At first it seemed such an odd book that she didn’t understand it. It was all about how the strikes of laborers were actually caused by the owners of the mines and factories and ranches.
Amanda hadn’t thought much about the men who worked in the fields. Sometimes she’d look up from her book and see them, far away, looking like toys, moving about under the blistering sun, but she’d always looked down at her book again and never given them another thought.
She read all afternoon, making her way through two of the books on the list, and by dinner time she felt confident she could discuss labor management with Taylor.
She was unprepared for his anger. It seemed she’d read the books incorrectly. She was to read the books from the management’s point of view.
“Have I taught you nothing?” Taylor had said to her in a cold voice.
She was sent to her room without the chocolate cake and she was to write a long essay on why the books of Montgomery and the others were wrong.
At midnight Amanda was still writing and she was coming to greatly dislike the name of Dr. Montgomery. He had turned her calm household upside down, made Taylor angry at her, cost her many hours extra work, and worst of all, cost her a slice of chocolate cake. If this was what his book did, what in the world was the man going to do?
She smiled in weariness and told herself she was too fanciful. Dr. Montgomery was merely a poor, old college professor who knew nothing about the economics of the real world, only the economics of a paper world. She imagined a gray-haired man bent over a desk, a dusty pile of books around him, and she wondered if he’d ever seen a moving-picture show. Perhaps the two of them could go into Kingman and…She stopped that thought. Taylor said moving pictures were mind-deadening and people who went to them were lower-class buffoons, so of course this college professor wouldn’t want to do something so unworthwhile.
She turned back to her essay and continued to write about how wrong Dr. Montgomery’s book was.
Chapter Two
It was the sixth day of the Los Angeles to Phoenix Harriman Derby and the two men in the Stutz were growing weary. What time there was for rest had been used for repairing the stripped-down racer. This morning they had hit mud, and the red racer—and the men—were now covered in dried, caked earth, only their lips clean, licked clean, and their eyes under their goggles not covered.
It had been a grueling race, with the path of the race unmarked and the citizens of the towns on the course not warned of the approaching speeding cars. The towns that were forewarned were worse, because the people stood in the middle of the road awaiting the approach of the cars. They had never seen autos that could do sixty miles an hour and had no understanding of how fast that was. Many drivers had been given the choice of hitting a tree and dying, or hitti
ng the spectators and taking them along. Most chose the tree.
Sometimes spectators were angry at the drivers or at autos in general and threw rocks at the drivers. Sometimes they tried to slap the driver on the back in congratulations. However they did it, spectators caused drivers to lose their lives.
Hank Montgomery, the driver of the Stutz, was cautious as he slowed down to forty to enter the little cowtown on the Arizona border. Next to him, his mechanic, Joe Fisher, leaned forward and strained to see what was ahead. Nothing seemed to be moving, and then, just as they passed the first building on the edge of town, they saw the reason for the empty street. To their left, slammed into a building, was Barney Parker’s Metz. The dust hadn’t settled from the wreck, and Barney lolled against the seat looking more dead than alive.
Hank downshifted and started to slow the Stutz when Joe yelled and pointed. An angry-looking group of citizens, clubs, sticks and rocks in hand, not to mention a few rifles and shotguns, were approaching Barney’s car, but when they heard Hank’s motor, they began to turn toward Hank’s Stutz.
“Get out of here!” Joe shouted.
There were angry, armed people in front and in back of Hank and buildings on both sides. He could slam the car into gear, floor the accelerator and plow into the people, or he could—
Hank did some of the fastest thinking he’d ever done, and some amazingly quick turning of the heavy steering wheel. He turned down an alley even as Joe yelled at him not to. If the alley was a dead end, they were done for. This was obviously one of those sleepy towns that wanted to stay that way and they resented autos tearing through their streets at all hours, scaring horses and making even the sidewalks unsafe. If they ever caught up with this race driver, Hank might not live to tell about it.
There was a light at the end of the alley. It opened into a fenced yard where a woman stood feeding her chickens—or had been feeding them, because now she was paralyzed at the sight of a filthy auto traveling at a breathtaking speed coming through her fence.
Both Hank and Joe ducked in unison from long practice as the fence hit the front of the car. When the men came up, they were attacked by squawking, flying chickens. Hank knocked one chicken off his lap then leaned out to brush two off the hood. Joe lifted a chicken from the floorboard and tossed it out.
After they got through the other side of the fence, Hank slowed down and turned to look back. The farm lady was shaking her fist at them as her chickens flew everywhere and behind her came running a group of outraged citizens.
“Are you crazy?” Joe yelled over the roar of the motor as Hank turned the car back toward the town. “Let’s get out of here.”