"The same to you, gentlemen," he said, jocosely, when he took his head out of the bonnet. "I was just getting ready to go and chase you some more. We've been waiting a solid hour, I should say."
"'We'?" questioned Ballard.
"Yes; Miss Elsa and I. We've been hunting you in every place a set of rubber tires wouldn't balk at, all afternoon. Say; you don't happen to have an extra spark-plug about your clothes, either of you, do you? One of these is cracked in the porcelain, and she skips like a dog on three legs."
Ballard ignored the motor disability completely.
"You brought Miss Craigmiles here? Where is she now?" he demanded.
The collegian laughed.
"She's in the grand salon, and Fitzpatrick the gallant is making her a cup of commissary tea. Wouldn't that jar you?"
Ballard swung out of his saddle and vanished through the open door of the commissary, leaving Bigelow and the motor-maniac to their own devices. In the littered storeroom he found Miss Craigmiles, sitting upon a coil of rope and calmly drinking her tea from a new tin can.
"At last!" she sighed, smiling up at him; and then: "Mercy me! how savage you look! We are trespassers; I admit it. But you'll be lenient with us, won't you? Jerry says there is a broken spark-plug, or something; but I am sure we can move on if we're told to. You have come to tell us to move on, Mr. Ballard?"
His frown was only the outward and visible sign of the inward attempt to grapple with the possibilities; but it made his words sound something less than solicitous.