"Yes. As well here as anywhere," came the reply.
"Bring her to a stop, kid; here, alongside this telegraph pole. That's good. Now, Bart, do it!"
Frank felt more than curious to know what the men had in mind. As soon as the car came to a stand the lighter man, who had not been hurt in the accident, jumped rather clumsily from the tonneau. Frank noticed this with surprise, for up to now he had looked upon the other as rather agile. Could he have been injured after all, and was just beginning to feel the effect of his headlong plunge into the bushes?
Judge of his utter amazement when he saw Bart at once seize hold of the nearby telegraph pole and begin to climb up with a series of sturdy kicks that apparently glued each foot in succession to the pole. Frank no longer wondered, for he knew that the man had been strapping a pair of lineman's climbing spurs to his legs when bending down in the tonneau of the stolen car!
CHAPTER XVII
A DESPERATE REMEDY
"All right, Bart?" called out the man in the car, as the other seemed to have reached the cross-bars far up the pole, over the lower of which he threw a leg, after the confident manner of one accustomed to such antics.
"Sure. It was dead easy," came floating down from above.
"Then get to work, and make a clean job of it. Look here, boy, don't you be thinkin' of leavin' us in the lurch just now. I ain't fit to run this shebang, so we need you, and need you bad. I reckon you know what this is, don't you?" and the fellow showed something that glistened like steel in the mellow moonlight.