“Guess we’d better wait for the others to catch up,” he said. “We broke a path for them, though, and it ought to be a lot easier for them than it was for us.”
“You must be all in, Bob,” said Joe. “You handled this car like an old timer, but now it’s about time you had a relief. Why not let me take a hack at it for the rest of the way?”
But Bob laughed, and shook his head. “I wouldn’t have missed that for a farm,” he said. “It was hard work, but it was the best kind of sport, too. Besides, Jim here says that the road runs along this ridge almost to the doors of the hotel, and it will be easy sailing the rest of the way.”
“I wonder what has become of the other cars?” said Mr. Layton, in a worried tone. “I hope nothing has happened to them.”
He had hardly ceased speaking, when one of the automobiles appeared, so covered with snow that it was hard to believe that it was actually a car at all. Shortly afterward the Salper car appeared, came to a halt when its driver saw the other two at a standstill, and its French chauffeur descended and advanced stiffly to where Bob and the driver of the second Layton car were standing.
“Pah!” he exclaimed. “In all France there is no road like that which I have just traverse. I am hire to drive ze petrol car, not ze snow plough. It eez ze so great mystery zat we have arrive so far.”
“Mystery is right,” agreed Jim, the injured driver. “The only casualty up to date is my busted wing, which is a lot better than a busted neck. But you’d better get back in your glass house, Frenchy, because we’re all frozen stiff, and the sooner we land at the hotel, the better. My arm feels as though it must be broken in twenty places.”
The Frenchman looked doubtfully at Jim when he spoke of an injured “wing,” but evidently set it down as being one more incomprehensible vagary of the English language, for he only shrugged his shoulders and returned to his car without comment.
The short day was drawing rapidly into night when the little party at last saw the cheerful lights of the hotel shining through the storm. Fifteen minutes later the lads were all seated in front of a roaring open fire in the big parlor and were telling their experiences to the amazed guests.
Bob was the only uncomfortable one in the crowd, as he heard everybody speaking in praise of the way he had risen to the emergency and was thankful for more reasons than one when dinner was announced.