Before he fairly realized it, he was at the canal. The Comet seemed to take the bridge at a flying leap, and was off and away through shady lanes of cottonwood-trees.
He passed several wagons and carriages coming toward him. They got out of the way and gave his charging steel wonder a wide berth. Occasionally he had to slow down to pass a vehicle moving toward Phœnix, but not often. The road was wide, and clean, and hard from edge to edge.
Speed and more speed! That was all Matt was thinking of then. The itch to eat up the miles as they had never been devoured before was racing hot through his veins. He would make a record from the hills to Phœnix this time which would stand unequaled for a long time.
He whirred across the second canal. His next bridge would be the one that spanned the town-ditch, and then he would be only a short half-mile from the court-house plaza, and the place where location notices were put on file.
As he struck the last lap of country road and looked away toward the beginning of the angling thoroughfare known as Grand Avenue, he glimpsed a flurry of dust. That was Perry, fanning along on the one-cylinder machine.
Matt was gaining on Perry hand over fist. As the dust blew aside, Matt could see Perry looking back, then turning again and coaxing Penny's wheel to fresh endeavor.
"I've got him," thought Matt exultantly, "and he knows it! He'll begin to understand, one of these days, that crooked work can make lots of trouble, but was never known to pay in the long run."
Perry, no doubt, was greatly astounded at sight of Motor Matt. He had left Matt in the hands of Jacks and Bisbee, and he had left the Comet temporarily useless. Small wonder if his brain was dazed and bewildered by the sight of that hurricane closing in on him from the rear.
If Chub and Clip had any fault to find with Matt, it was because they thought him too "easy." This was because he had a habit of looking for the good qualities in a fellow, rather than for the bad ones. Perry, according to Matt, would have been all right if he hadn't got a wrong start; and Matt had even hinted to Chub that there might be something good even in that scheming follower of fortune's wheel, Dirk Hawley.
Chub and Clip couldn't understand this kind of talk. They realized that it didn't show weakness, for they had sampled Matt's fiber too many times not to know his underlying strength of character. So they laid it up to eccentricity, and called it a hobby. Matt, however, called it a "principle"—and he had been known to fight like a wildcat for his "principles."