“Gee! She’s a beaut!” exclaimed Patsy. “She looks about as big as a haystack, and a durned sight more dangerous! Straight for us, chief! That’s how she’s coming!”
Patsy was holding to the side of the car with a convulsive clutch, as he watched the gigantic stone skipping down the mountain.
It was a ticklish moment.
Nick Carter’s eyes were on the road in front. He had the wheel in a firm grasp, and the whole machinery of the car was under perfect control.
But, with all that, unless he enjoyed a little, common, everyday, bull luck, he did not believe he could get away from the insensate foe tearing toward him like a thing possessed.
“We may make it!” observed Chick. “But she’s zig-zagging in such a crazy fashion that you cannot tell what she is going to do. Can you open her up a little more?”
The motor car was tearing along faster than sixty miles an hour now. She jumped from the road so often and so hard that she was in the air most of the time. As Patsy declared, she only hit the high places, and not many of them.
Why the ponderous machine did not swerve from some of the big stones or inequalities she encountered, and go shooting over the precipice into the rock-strewn valley far below, can never be explained.
She didn’t. That is all that can be said.
Down came the great bowlder, jumping along as if it were full of life—and deviltry!