CHAPTER II
DAN SPEEDWELL AT HIS BEST
Billy Speedwell, at the head of the other lads, leaped into the road and sprinted to the spot where Maxey’s automobile had been thrown over the embankment. They saw that the unfortunate youth had clung to his wheel; but he had gone out of sight with the wreckage.
Their interest in and sympathy for Maxey blinded them to the further actions of the maroon car and the three men in it. But Dan Speedwell, coming back toward the scene of the catastrophe, noted well the conduct of these men.
The chauffeur had made no proper attempt to avoid the collision; and now he neither slowed down nor glanced back to see what had become of the drab car and its driver.
When Dan Speedwell reached the place where his motorcycle rested beside the road, in company with those of the other boys, the maroon car was a mile away along the straight highway. There was plainly no intention on the part of the three men to stop and inquire as to the damage their car had done.
The other boys thought only of Maxey and his machine. Dan, angered by the indifference of the other automobilists, had no intention of letting them escape if he could help it. His mind was made up on the instant. He seized his wheel and rolled it out into the road.
The balloon of smoke which trailed the flying maroon car was already far down the road. It seemed impossible for a boy on a motorcycle to seek to overtake that flying vehicle. But Dan knew that farther on the automobile could not safely maintain its present pace, and he knew likewise the speed which he could get out of his machine.
Dan and Billy Speedwell had owned their motorcycles a short time only; but within that time they had learned to handle the machines with the best. Both at the Compton motordrome, and in the Riverdale baseball park the Speedwell boys had won high place in trials of speed. These races are narrated in the first volume of this series, entitled: “The Speedwell Boys on Motorcycles.”
Their Flying Feathers, the newest model produced by the Darringford Machine Shops, in Riverdale, had been given to the brothers by Robert Darringford whose life Dan and Billy had saved from a fire that had destroyed a part of the machine shop plant.