Bert Wilson at the Wheel

by J. W. Duffield

But Bert saw that they had one, and only one, bare chance of life. He did not try to apply the brakes, which would have been useless and fatal, but as the big auto reached the railroad tracks [he wrenched the steering wheel around and headed it directly up the track] in front of the northbound train. As he did this he opened the throttle, and bent over the wheel in a desperate and almost hopeless attempt to beat the flying locomotive until the engineer, who of course was using every means in his power to stop his train, could check its momentum and give them a chance to escape.

The “Red Scout” bumped and swayed wildly over the uneven ballasting and ties, and the boys breathed heartfelt prayers that nothing on the staunch car would break. In spite of all Bert could do, the fast express train gained on them, although sparks were streaming from the wheels where the brakes were clamped against them. The engineer had reversed the locomotive, and the great driving wheels were revolving backward.

The momentum of a fast and heavy express train is not a thing to be checked in a moment, however, and the boys in the rear of the automobile could feel the heat from the locomotive boiler.

But the powerful automobile had gotten “into its stride” by this time, and was fairly flying over the uneven roadbed, and to the boys it felt as though it were only hitting the high places, as Frank afterward expressed it. For a hundred or two hundred feet the train failed to gain an inch, and then the brakes began to tell and it gradually fell to the rear.

Shorty leaned over and thumped Bert on the back and yelled: “Slow up, Bert, slow up! We’re out of danger now, I guess.”

Bert glanced back, and saw that Shorty was right. They were drawing rapidly away from the locomotive, so he reduced speed, and the automobile gradually attained a safer pace, and at the first opportunity Bert swung it up off the tracks and onto a country road. This done, he stopped the machine, and leaning on the steering wheel, buried his face in his hands. He said not a word, and the boys could see that he was trembling like a leaf. In a few moments he recovered himself, however, and the boys began to overwhelm him with questions:

“How did you ever think of going up the track instead of trying to get across, Bert?” inquired Frank. “If you had tried to cross that would have been the last of us, because we could never have made it.”

“I did it because it was the only thing to be done, I guess,” replied Bert, in a shaky voice. “I’m no end of a fool to go at that speed on a road that I don’t know, anyway. I don’t know what I could have been thinking of to take such chances. Mr. Hollis will never have any confidence in me again, I guess.”

“Nonsense!” retorted Bob, indignantly. “Why, if Mr. Hollis could have seen the presence of mind you showed, I think he would trust you all the more, if that is possible. Not one person in a hundred would have thought of doing what you did.”

“Yes, but that’s not all of it, by any means,” said Bert, in a mournful voice. “I’ll bet that we’ve broken something on the old car, as well as almost getting ourselves converted into sausage meat. Here goes to look things over, anyway.”