He cranked up again, and the automobile began to shake and quiver "like an elephant with the palsy," to quote the disgusted Marty.
"Say!" he whispered, "this isn't much like your Kremlin—believe me!"
They started. A dog got up from his bed in the dust of the road, yapped at them languidly, and lay down again in his form. The car skidded around another corner and they were immediately in the open country. Climbing a long hill the automobile seemed a dozen times on the point of being stalled; but no—she kept pluckily on to the summit.
On the down-grade beyond this rise the car went so fast—thumping and crashing over outcropping roots and other obstructions—that Janice cried out in alarm.
"If we don't meet nothin' we're all right—eh?" shouted Carlitos above the roar of the car. "The brake, she done bust."
"Huh!" muttered Marty. "One thing sure, we can go as fast as this old 'tin Lizzie' can."
This did not sound altogether reassuring to Janice. She unlatched the door on her side of the tonneau, ready to jump out if it looked as though the reckless driver was about to bring them to disaster.
The man in the red vest hung on to the side, and, short as his neck was, the two passengers in the tonneau could see that roll of fat above the collar of his shirt turning pale!
"Tom's getting white around the gills," whispered Marty to his cousin, chuckling. "He frightens easy. I wonder if we could scare him into giving up that cash and helping dad?"
"But—but he surely ha-hasn't all that mo-money with him," was jounced out of Janice's lips in a staccato whisper.