“Forget all that, Bud,” cautioned wise Hugh. “That sort of talk never mends cut tires. All of us must get busy, and see what we can do. Luckily enough you made out to have an extra tire along, even if it’s a tough proposition. Let’s make the change in double-quick time.”
All the while they worked the boys exchanged opinions, and if that man could only have heard what they thought of him surely his ears would have burned.
“One thing certain,” Hugh was saying later on, as the job progressed fairly well, “this thing has settled the question about his being interested in keeping us out of the mobilization camp.”
“Just what it has, Hugh,” admitted Blake, jubilantly. “When once you know what you’re up against, the chances of winning out are stronger; anyway, that’s always been my opinion.”
“Have you cleaned off the road ahead of us, Blake?” asked Bud, “because we’ll be on the move again as soon as I get a little more air in this tire.”
“I walked along the road for a hundred yards,” replied the other, “and found no more of the glass. I reckon he bunched it all around here, so we couldn’t dodge running smack into the same.”
“After this,” said Bud, grimly, “I’ll slow up whenever we come to a turn. You never can tell what a wretch like that may have fixed around the bend. Once bit, twice shy, isn’t a bad motto. I don’t mean to get trapped in the same way again, if I know it.”
“So I was right, wasn’t I?” Blake remarked, with a touch of satisfaction in his voice, “when I said I felt sure I had seen that flivver a mile or two ahead of us, when it should have been at least ten miles further along?”
“That’s correct, Blake,” assented Hugh; “your eyes told you the truth. All of us will have to keep on the watch right along. The man who could play such a mean trick on people in a car with such bad tires as this one has would be equal to anything, in my opinion. Ready now, Bud?”
“Yes, and that tire seems to be pretty snug,” came from the hard-worked pilot, who, however, never once complained, for Bud was not a shirker, if he did have certain faults of his own to contend with. “I only hope the others don’t turn out to have been cut so they’ll go back on us sooner or later. Glass like this is a bad proposition when you’re running on worn rubber.”