But Bob held grimly on. They were on the outskirts of the town now. For the last several blocks they had been driving through a particularly low quarter. The huts were of the poorest, being mere jumbled collections of shingles and tin or of ’dobe, with here and there a little patch of desert grass enclosed in a rickety picket fence before the more pretentious. As if satisfied with having done its worst, with that last dreadful jouncing given them, the roadway had become a little better. Bob was still keeping his distance of a block behind the leading car. He was wondering whether Ramirez and Ramon were aware of his presence behind them and, if so, whether their suspicions were aroused. He was likewise beginning to ask himself whether the chase would lead beyond the outskirts which now loomed ahead, the thinning out of the houses giving warning of approach to the open country beyond.
“If they lead us out into the country we’ll be out of luck,” he commented. “Don’t know how much gas we have. Probably not much. That’s always the way when you need it. We’d look fine, wouldn’t we, if we got ten or twenty miles down into Mexico and the old bus died on us? Besides, if we get out of town, they certainly will know we’re following ’em.”
“Uh-huh.” Captain Cornell grunted. He was thinking along similar lines.
“Maybe, they’re not suspicious of us yet, however,” Bob said, as another thought came to him. “Notice we haven’t turned any corners for blocks? Sticking to a straight road that way, it doesn’t look so much as if we were following them. Might just be going the same way.”
The car ahead slowed down before a two-story frame house on the right hand side, and halted alongside the wooden fence enclosing a small weed-grown plot of ground in front. The house stood in the next block. A street intervened.
“Turn right up this street,” commanded Captain Cornell quickly, and big Bob complied without asking why.
At the same time he slowed down, but the flyer shook his head.
“Keep going until the next cross street, then turn left and we’ll stop. That way, if they’re watching us, we’ll get out of sight. Then we can leave the car and sneak back to have a look from cover at that house.”
Bob turned the next corner, finding himself in a street as deserted as any they had passed through, and with only a few houses in the block. All were mere huts. Not a person, man, woman or child, was in sight. The only signs of life were a few chickens pecking dispiritedly at the ground under a drooping pepper tree in the shade of which Bob brought the car to a stop.
“Whew,” he ejaculated, whipping out a handkerchief and wiping his streaming face. “That was what you might call a real joy ride.” He climbed out and looked curiously at the springs of the old car. They were rust-covered but sound. Bob shook his head, marvelling. “How those springs stood it, I don’t know,” he said.