As he had surmised on his entrance, there was only a single room. The floor was of dirt, and the shack had been simply slung together in the rudest kind of a way. There was a small table of unplaned boards and a stool, from which one of the three legs was missing. A bunk in the corner and a tattered blanket completed the entire outfit of the temporary shelter in which Bert had so unexpectedly found himself.
It might have been a cabin formerly dwelt in by one of the “poor whites” of the mountains, or possibly a hunter’s shack that served at intervals for a temporary camp. At all events, it was shelter, and, in his present wet and desperate condition, Bert was not inclined to “look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“It isn’t exactly the Waldorf-Astoria,” he thought to himself, as he brought his motorcycle in out of the pounding rain, “but it surely looks mighty good to me just now.”
There was a rude fireplace at one side and some wood and kindling left by the previous occupant, and it was only a few moments before a cheery blaze gave an air of comfort to the small interior. After the fire was well started, Bert took his wet garments one by one and dried them before the fire. In a little while he was snug and dry, and inclined to look philosophically on the day that had had such an unlooked for ending. He even chuckled, as he looked at the speedometer and found that it registered over two hundred and fifty miles. He at least was nearly up to his schedule, in spite of the rain, and to-morrow was “a new day.”
“It might easily have been worse,” he thought. “Suppose it had rained that way this morning, instead of holding off as long as it did. I’ve cleared the Eastern States, at any rate, and am at last ‘down South.’”
As a precaution, when he stopped at Washington, he had secured a few sandwiches and a can of sardines. These he put out on the rough table, and, as hunger is always “the best sauce,” he enjoyed it hugely. There wasn’t a crumb left, when at last he leaned back contentedly and stretched his legs before the fire.
“Like Robinson Crusoe, I’m master of all I survey,” he mused. “Not that my kingdom is a very extensive one,” as he looked about the little room, that he could have covered with one jump.
The rain still kept on with unabated fury, but the harder it poured, the more cozy the shack seemed by contrast.
“Guess you and I will have to bunk it out together, old chap,” he said, addressing his faithful wheel. “Well, I might easily find myself in worse company. You’re a good old pal, if there ever was one.”
He took from his kit some oiled rags and together with some old gunny sacking that he found in a corner, started to clean the machine. The mud with which it was caked made this a work of time, as well as a “labor of love,” and two hours wore away before he had concluded. But it was a thorough job, and, by the time he was through, the “Blue Streak” was as bright and shining as when it faced the starter at noon on the day before.