CHAPTER XXI
THE FIRST TEN HOURS
This road race was much different from the usual test of speed on the open highway. There were no guards lines, or men with flags at cross roads to warn the unwary drivers of horses, or pedestrians. The cars in this endurance run had to take all the chances, and suffer the delays usual to an automobile run in the suburban districts.
The Speedwells in their forty-eight were less than five miles out of Compton when they passed forty-seven. On the edge of Pachusett, half a mile farther on, they found forty-six in the ditch! A big load of hay was overturned across the road, and the hay wagon had lost a wheel.
How this wreck had occurred the Speedwells did not stop to ask. There was a crowd of a couple of hundred persons around the scene of the wreck, and it was plain that neither the automobilists nor the farmers needed any help.
There had been frost enough the night before to make the fields hard, and this was a cloudy day. Dan made up his mind instantly to go around the obstruction. He and Billy got out and removed a section of the roadside fence and steered their drab car out into a turnip field.
Number forty-nine was then in view; but the Speedwells got away quickly and ran through Pachusett as fast as they dared. Two stern-looking constables, with big tin stars on the breasts of their coats, held their Waterbury watches on number forty-eight as it sung along Main Street; but they evidently could not figure out just how fast the boys were going.
It had not rained for some time, and the roads were very dusty in places. Where the roadway was lightly built the autos ahead of the Speedwells had already cut deeply into the surface. It was soon hard traveling, and the dust and sand sifted over them, and over the car, until they looked like millers.
“This is why the faster we get ahead this first day, and the more cars we put behind us, the better off we will be for the rest of the run,” said Dan.
“I guess so! Lettie Parker hit it right the day we went to Karnac Lake. The best place in a run of this kind is right up ahead,” agreed Billy.