The morning was fresh, the sun was bright, and the clear weather seemed a good augury for what lay before. Matt always made it a point to look on the bright side of things, anyway.
Ahead of him lay a bend in the road. When he rounded the bend he felt sure that he would be able to catch a glimpse of the white dome of the capitol, and from that point onward he would not be long in covering the ground.
He halted abruptly just before he got to the bend. The peculiar corrugated marks of automobile tires lay under his eyes in the dust of the road. It wasn't so much the marks themselves that claimed his attention as the strange way they curved from the roadside and entered the brush. Why should an automobile be taking to the woods in that unaccountable fashion?
From ahead of him, around the bend, he heard a car. The car was on the move, plainly enough, but the motor was in distress, pounding badly; not only that, but there was a smell of fried engine in the air, as though some reckless driver were burning up his transmission.
Was the car Matt heard the one that had left its tracks there by the roadside? He presumed that this must be the case; so, instead of investigating the bushes, he started to run around the bend. If he could help the injured car, then perhaps the driver might give him a lift the rest of the way into town.
As he started on, after a moment's pause, a sinuous, snakelike thing leaped noiselessly from the bushes behind him, unwound itself in the air, and a loop fell over his head and dropped on his shoulders.
Motor Matt jumped as though he had been touched with a live wire. He half turned and lifted his hands to remove the coil, but it tightened before he could free himself, and a rough jerk from behind landed him on his back in the dust.
Matt had not been expecting such lawlessness on that peaceable country road. Who was back of it, and what was the purpose?
To escape, half-strangled as he was and with enemies bearing down on him, was out of the question—at that moment. The lad's resourcefulness suggested a trick, whereby he hoped to gain time and discover a chance for escape.
Although the fall backward had not injured him in the least, yet he gave a groan, tried to lift himself, and then fell back and lay still and silent.