“Gracious! What now?” Penny exclaimed.
“A flat,” Jerry answered tersely. “Just our luck.”
Pulling up at the side of the road, he jumped out to peer at the tires. As he had feared, the left rear one was down.
“We’ll probably lose that fellow now,” he said irritably.
With Penny holding a flashlight, the reporter worked as fast as he could to change the tire. However, nearly fifteen minutes elapsed before the task had been accomplished.
“We may as well turn back,” he said, tossing tools into the back of the car. “How about it?”
“Oh, let’s keep on a little farther,” Penny pleaded. “If we drive fast we might still overtake him.”
Without much hope, they resumed the pursuit. Tires whined a protest as they swung around sharp corners, and the motor began to heat.
“This old bus can’t take it any more,” Jerry declared, slackening speed again. “No sense in ruining the car.”
Penny had been watching the road carefully. They had passed no bisecting highways, so she felt certain that the truck could not have turned off. On either side of the unpaved thoroughfare were lonely stretches of swamp and woods.