“It’s next door to a bit of junk,” remarked Jack, as they moved forward along the trail at a rate of about fifteen miles an hour. “I think if a fellow tried to make real speed with it it would fall to pieces.”
“Sounds to me as if it needed oiling,” ventured Spouter.
“Yes, it needs oiling, and new springs, and a new engine, and a new chassis and a few other things, and then it would be quite a good car,” answered Jack, with a grin.
The two lads in the car had covered less than a mile, and the others were coming up behind them, when they saw a man running toward them and waving his arms wildly.
“Hi there! Stop!” called out the man. “Stop, I tell you! If you don’t stop I’ll have the law on you!”
As soon as he saw the man Jack slowed up and came to a standstill by the side of the fellow. He was a tall, lean man of about fifty, with a strangely wrinkled and sallow face and long, drooping, reddish mustache. He had a pair of greenish-brown eyes that seemed to bore the boys through and through as he gazed rather savagely at them.
“What do you mean by running off with my car?” he demanded, as he shook his fist at the lads.
“Is this your car?” questioned Jack.
“You know well enough it’s my car!” blustered the man. “And I demand to know what you mean by running away with it!”
“We didn’t run away with it,” answered Spouter.