“It was, for fair,” agreed Dick, “but perhaps she went still faster when we scudded up the track that day, with the express thundering behind.”
“Our hearts went faster, anyway,” declared Tom. “Gee, but that was a narrow squeak. It makes me shiver now when I think of it.”
“Same here,” echoed Bert, little dreaming that before long, on the splendid machine whose handlebars he held, he would graze the very garments of death.
Happily, however, the future was hidden, and for the moment the little group were absorbed in the mechanical wonders of the motorcycle that loomed large in the road before them. It stood for the last word in up-to-date construction. The inventive genius of the twentieth century had spent itself on every contrivance that would add to its speed, strength and beauty. It was a poem in bronze and steel and rubber. From the extremity of the handlebars in front to the rim of its rear wheel, not the tiniest thing had been overlooked or left undone that could add to its perfection. Fork and cams and springs and valves and carburetor—all were of the finest material and the most careful workmanship.
“It seemed an awful lot to pay, when I heard that it cost you over three hundred bucks,” said Tom, “but after looking it over, I guess you got your money’s worth.”
“The value’s there, all right,” asserted Bert confidently. “I wouldn’t take that amount of money for the fun I’ve had already. And what I’m going to have”—he made a comprehensive wave of the hand—“it simply can’t be reckoned in cold coin.”
“It’s getting to be a mighty popular way of traveling,” said Dick. “I saw it stated somewhere that a quarter of a million are in use and that the output is increasing all the time.”
“Yes,” added Drake, “they certainly cover a wide field. Ministers, doctors, rural mail carriers, gas, electric and telephone companies are using them more and more. In the great pastures of the West, the herders use them in making their rounds and looking after the sheep. All the police departments in the big cities employ a lot of them, and in about every foreign army there is a motorcycle corps. You’ve surely got lots of company, old man.”