"Wow!" he yelled, grabbing his ankle with both hands.
"Never mind your leg," shouted Adrian. "Jump on or you'll be left."
Billie tried to obey, but the car was now under headway and although he sprinted his best, he was soon left behind.
Adrian started to jump off the car, but seeing his intention Billie called to him not to do it.
"I'll get there some time," he called. "Just tell them I'm coming," and he stood in the middle of the track looking ruefully after the rapidly disappearing car.
After some moments he picked up the claw-bar and threw it spitefully into the ditch beside the track, as much as to say, "Lay there! You're the cause of all the trouble." Then he started slowly after the car.
In the meantime Adrian was flying as fast back toward Pachuca as he had been flying away from it only a few minutes before. It could not have been more than ten minutes altogether since the wreck of the engine and Adrian figured that if the grade were steep enough the car might gain momentum enough to carry it back to the scene of the trouble; but he had little hope that it would.
When he shot through Pitahaya on his return trip, however, he saw that the car was going at a terrific rate of speed.
"What do you think?" he asked one of the Mexicans. "Do you think we'll get all the way back?"
"Cierto," was the reply. "When they first built this road they used to have mules haul the car to the top of this hill and then turn it loose and it would run almost to Pachuca. That was before it had any engines."