It was Bob Winters. Bob Winters and his car. And waiting. Surely no twist of fortune could have been greater. He was a college chum of Huyck’s and of the professor’s. If there was one man that could make the run in the time allotted, Bob was he. But Huyck was impersonal. With the burden on his mind he thought of naught but his destination.
“Ten thousand!” he shouted.
The man held back his head. Huyck was far too serious to appreciate mischief. But not the man.
“Charley Huyck, of all men. Did young Lochinvar come out of the West? How much did you say? This desert air and the dust, ’tis hard on the hearing. She must be a young, fair maiden. Ten thousand.”
“Twenty thousand. Thirty thousand. Damnation, man, you can have the mountain. Into the car.”
By sheer subjective strength he forced the other into the machine. It was not until they were shooting out of the grounds on two wheels that he realized that the man was Bob Winters. Still the workings of fate.
The madcap and wild Bob of the races! Surely Destiny was on the job. The challenge of speed and the premium. At the opportune moment before disaster the two men were brought together. Minutes weighed up with centuries and hours outbalanced millenniums. The whole world slept; little did it dream that its very life was riding north with these two men into the midnight.
Into the midnight! The great car, the pride of Winter’s heart, leaped between the pillars. At the very outset, madcap that he was, he sent her into seventy miles an hour; they fairly jumped off the hill into the village. At a full seventy-five he took the curve; she skidded, sheered half around and swept on.
For an instant Charley held his breath. But the master hand held her; she steadied, straightened, and shot out into the desert. Above the whir of the motor, flying dust and blurring what-not, Charley got the tones of his companion’s voice. He had heard the words somewhere in history.
“Keep your seat, Mr. Greely. Keep your seat!”