It was all perfectly foolish, of course; but perfectly human. If they could have taken time to think—only there wasn’t any time—they would have run in exactly the opposite direction; back to the despatcher’s office where a quick wire alarm call to the “yard limits” operator out beyond the eastern end of the freight yard might have set things in motion to shunt the wild engine into a siding, and to display danger signals for the incoming freight train.
But nobody ever thinks of everything all at once; and to Larry and his running mate the one thing bitingly needful seemed to be to overtake that lumbering Pacific-type before it could get clear away and bring the world to an end.
They were not more than half-way up through the deserted freight yard before they both realized that even well-trained, base-running legs and wind were not good enough. Dick Maxwell was the first to cave in.
“W-we can’t do it!” he gurgled—“she’s gone!”
It was at this crisis that Larry Donovan had his inspiration; found himself grappling breathlessly with that precious quality which makes the smashed fighter get up and dash the sweat out of his eyes and fight again. The inspiration came at the sight of the roadmaster’s transformed hand-car which had been fitted with a gasoline drive, standing on the siding where its late users had left it.
“The Bug—Browder’s motor car!” he gasped, leading a swerving dart aside toward the new hope. “Help me push it out to the switch—quick!”
They flung themselves against the light platform car, heaved, shoved, got it in motion, and ran it swiftly to the junction of the siding with the main track. Here, tugging and lifting a corner at a time (they had no key with which to unlock the switch, of course,) they got it over upon the proper pair of rails. Another shove started the little pop-popping motor and they were off, with Larry, who as a night helper in the shops the winter before had worked on the job of transforming the hand-car and installing the engine in it, at the controls.
By the time all this was done the runaway had passed the “yard limits” signal tower and was disappearing around the first curve in the track beyond. Neither of the boys knew anything about the speed possibilities in the “Bug,” but they soon found that it could run like a scared jack rabbit. Recklessly Larry depressed the lever of the accelerator, trusting to the lightness of the car to keep it from jumping as it squealed around the curves, and at the first mile-post they could see that they were gaining upon the wild engine, which was still choking itself with too much power.
“Another mile and we’ll get there!” Dick Maxwell shouted—he had to shout to make himself heard above the rattle and scream of the flying wheels; “another mile, if that freight’ll only——”
There was a good reason why he didn’t finish whatever it was that he was going to say. The two racing machines, the beetle and the elephant, had just flicked around a curve to a long straight-away, and up ahead, partly hidden by the thick wooding of another curve, they both saw the reflection from the beam of a westbound headlight. The time freight was coming.