“Much obliged,” said Bert, and tore open the yellow envelope.
“Ride fast,” it read, “have just heard Hayward is within three hundred miles of San Francisco. Hurry.”
The slip of yellow paper dropped from Bert’s nerveless fingers. Three hundred miles away. Why, Bert was as far from San Francisco as that himself, with mountainous roads still before him, and his machine out of commission!
If he could only do something, anything, that would be a relief. But he was absolutely helpless in the grasp of an unforeseen calamity, and all he could do was to pray desperately for the speedy arrival of the new cylinder.
He hastened back to the repair shop, and found that in his absence everything, with, of course, the exception of the front cylinder, had been put together. “We’ve done all we can,” the proprietor assured him. “A few minutes ago I called up the agents in Clyde and they said that their man was on the way with it. So it ought to get here early this afternoon.”
“Well,” declared Bert grimly, “I’m not going to stir out of this place till it does come, let me tell you.”
He waited with what patience he could muster, and at last, a little before two o’clock, the long-awaited cylinder arrived. With feverish haste Bert fastened it to the motor base himself, too impatient to let anybody else do it. Besides, he was resolved to take no chances of having this cylinder damaged. Ten minutes later the last nut had been tightened, and the “Blue Streak” was wheeled out into the street. Now that the heartbreaking waiting was over, Bert felt capable of anything. As he vaulted into the saddle, he made a compact with himself. “If my machine holds out,” he resolved, “I will not sleep again until I reach San Francisco;” and when Bert made a resolution, he kept it.
He scorched through the streets of the town regardless, for the time being, of local speed ordinances. In a few minutes he was out on the open road, and then,—well, the “Blue Streak” justified all the encomiums he had ever heaped upon it. Up hill and down he sped, riding low over the handlebars, man and machine one flying, space-devouring unit. The day drew into dusk, dusk changed to darkness, and Bert dismounted long enough to light his lamp and was off again, streaking over the smooth road like a flying comet. At times he slowed down as he approached curves, but was off again like the wind when he had rounded them. Sometimes steep hills confronted him, but the speeding motorcycle took them by storm, and topped their summits almost before gravity could act to slacken his headlong speed. Then the descent on the other side would be a wild, dizzy rush, when at time the speedometer needle reached the ninety mark.
But the country became more mountainous after a while, and Bert encountered hills that even the “Blue Streak” was forced to negotiate on low speed. This ate up gasoline, and about midnight Bert, on stopping a moment to examine his fuel supply, found that it was almost exhausted. Fortunately, however, about a mile further on he reached a wayside garage. He knocked repeatedly, but received no answer.