"Twenty-three for yours, Mr. Wandering Willie!" added Nat.
"Don't I wish Elmer would just hold him till we come up," added the other, with a threat in his manner that hardly became a scout; but then Toby had been a boy long before this scout movement was dreamed of, and the natural instinct is very hard to repress.
"Hey, do we drop our wheels, and make a spurt, so as to be in at the finish?" demanded Nat.
"You can, if you want to," replied his mate; "but something tells me a machine may come in handy yet, even if it is an old huckleberry makeshift like mine."
"Gee, yes! I didn't think of that," Nat muttered, still clinging to his motorcycle. "The hobo might strike the road again, you mean?"
"Yep, that's what, Nat."
"And go skeetering off on Elmer's wheel?"
"Just what I meant," replied Toby. "He's been making a sorter curve all along, like he wanted to strike the road; I noticed that, Nat."
"So did I. Don't like the job of pushing that machine through the scrub any too much, I reckon," Nat remarked, panting from his own exertions.
"And say, do you blame him?" Toby asked.