On the seventeenth tee Dana's caddy approached her without hesitation, the careful reserve completely broken now by his intense personal interest.

"Kovac just sewed it up," he told her, "and if she don't fall off, she's going to crack the course record. All you gotta do now is par these last two and you're in like Flynn for second money. Looks like Emerson has had it and nobody else even close."

Dana looked over at Clare and felt a quick throb of pity. The girl indeed looked as though she had "had it." She looked tired to the point of exhaustion, but more than that, the fight seemed to have gone out of her and the abrupt change from the former driving aggressiveness to this subdued acceptance of defeat was somehow pathetic.

Then, as she caught Dana's glance, she did something that filled Dana with amazement and a quite irrational joy. With a faint smile, Clare raised one hand with thumb and forefinger making a circle in the familiar gesture of approval and applause.

After the few seconds it took Dana to fully comprehend the meaning of the gesture, she returned it, then grinned down at her caddy, feeling more nearly jubilant than she had in a very long time.

"Jimmy," she said, "what do you say we finish this thing up in a blaze of glory? Instead of those pars, how would a pair of birds suit you?"

"A pair of eagles would suit me better," he replied, quite seriously.

Dana laughed and it felt good.

one

"You don't want much, do you? Alright, let's see what we can do."

She didn't get a pair of eagles, but she got one. And when her card was checked, she found that she had, unbelievably, scored an even 70. She had also matched Torchy Kovac's 32 on the much more difficult back nine.

After the formal presentation ceremonies and banquet that night, some of the visiting pros decided to throw a private party for Torchy Kovac at a dimly-lit roadhouse a mile down the road from the Country Club. As all such parties do, it turned out to be a noisy and somewhat drunken affair with a great many "toasts" and an unlimited supply of free drinks provided by the house and the local customers who were invariably swept into the festivities. Sometime during the evening the blaring juke box, the noisy voices, the dense smoke and the heat began to grate on Dana's nerves. She was also feeling the effects of too many highballs too fast and she stepped outside for a breath of fresh air.

The storm which had been threatening all day was about to break. Jagged flashes of lightning split the angry, low-hanging, slow-boiling clouds and thunder rolled in a constant, ominous growl. A blessedly cool wind had sprung up and the smell of rain to come was very sharp and sweet.

Dana strolled toward the big, battered and dusty convertible that she and Toni owned jointly, to put the top up before the deluge. She worked leisurely, and when she had finished and was rolling up the windows, she heard her name called softly from a

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