Woody was so depressed after Cindy Lou threw a connecting rod during the trial runs at the salt lakes that neither Worm nor Steve could do or say anything to cheer him up. It is possible that Mary Jane might have been able to remove his depression, for part of it at least stemmed from the quarrel between them. But if Mary Jane knew anything of Woody's troubles, she left him severely alone. Woody heard through Steve that she was going around with Bob Peters, and he wondered at times whether he ought not to go around to Bob Peters and punch him on the nose.
"I'd sure feel a lot better," he told Steve, "if I punched him right in the snoot."
Steve was somewhat undersized, a freckled, sandy-haired youth who was growing a mustache distinguishable only because it made him look as though there was something wrong with his upper lip.
"You might feel better right when you punched him," Steve said. "But one second later you might not feel so good. That Peters is a pretty big guy."
"Just a sack of hog fat," said Woody savagely. "Coming right here with my girl so she could see me handing over the ten bucks to him that I was supposed to take her out with."
"Well, maybe he did," said Steve. "But you gotta admit it was you who made the deal."
"Say, whose side you on anyway?" Woody asked fiercely.
"Yours, pal," said Steve. "But you won't get anywhere blaming other people for what you did. Anyway, that's all over. Did you take the head off Cindy Lou and see how much damage had been done?" For answer Woody reached up to a shelf above his work bench and threw Steve a piston. Part of a connecting rod was fastened to it, but it was snapped off in the middle and twisted like a stick of liquorice.
"Gee," said Steve, deeply impressed. "Sure made a mess of that."
"You should look at the cylinder," said Woody. "There's a hole in the cylinder wall big enough for an elephant to get through." He led Steve over to a corner of the garage where the engine block of Cindy Lou lay on the floor. There was a rent in one of the cylinder walls and deep score marks on two others.