"Own that craft?" and Dick Ferral nodded toward the car.
"No; it belongs to a man named Tomlinson, who lives in Denver. Carl and I brought it to Albuquerque for him. When we got there, we found a line from him asking us to bring the car on to Santa Fé. If we got there in two weeks he said it would be time enough, so we're jogging along and taking things easy."
"If you've got plenty of time, I shouldn't think you'd want to do any cruising in waters like these, unless you had daylight to steer by."
"We'd have reached the next town before sunset," Matt answered, "if we hadn't had trouble with a tire."
"It was a good thing for me you were behind your schedule, and happened along just after I turned a handspring over the cliff. If you hadn't, Davy Jones would have had me by this time. But what became of that other craft? I didn't have much time to look at it, for it came foaming along full and by, at a forty-knot gait, but as I slid over the rock I couldn't see a soul aboard."
"No more dere vasn't," said Carl earnestly. "Dot vas a shpook pubble, Verral. You see him, und ve see him, aber he don'd vas dere; nodding, nodding at all only schust moonshine!"
"Well, well, well!" Ferral cast an odd glance at Motor Matt. "That old flugee was a sort of Flying Dutchman, hey?"
"I don'd know somet'ing about dot," answered Carl, shaking his head gruesomely, "aber I bed you it vas a shpook."
"There wasn't any one on the car," put in Matt, "and it's a mystery how it traveled this road like it did. It came out of a gully, farther back around the bend, right ahead of us. We followed it, and when we had come around that turn it had vanished."
"What you say takes me all aback, messmates," said Ferral. "I'm no believer in ghost-stories, but this one of yours stacks up nearer the real thing in that line than any I ever heard. Say," and Ferral seemed to have a sudden idea, "if you fellows want a berth for the night, why not put in at La Vita Place?"