[CHAPTER I.]
NEW FRIENDS AND NEW FORTUNES.
"What next?"
Not often does a boy put that question to himself and receive an answer as quickly as Motor Matt received his.
The king of the motor boys was out among the sand dunes on the Presidio Military Reservation. He had started to walk to the old fort at the Golden Gate, but had dropped down on one of the sand heaps, thinking—a little moodily, it must be admitted—over his present situation, and what lay ahead.
It was a fine morning. The sky was pale blue and without a cloud, and the bay was as blue as indigo. The trade wind blew over him, and tempered the heat, and the salt tang in the air reminded him of the long voyage around the Horn which he and his chums had completed no more than a week before.
Alcatraz was so close that it almost seemed to Matt as though he could take a running jump from the shore and clear the intervening stretch of water, and beyond Alcatraz, like a purple pyramid, arose Tamalpais, looking westward across the Pacific.
Matt was gloomy because, early that morning, he had separated from his two chums, Dick Ferral and Carl Pretzel. Dick had received a telegram from his uncle, in Denver, asking him to come east at once. At his invitation, Carl had gone with him. Both lads urged Matt to accompany them, but he had declined, thinking more seriously than he had ever done of some "prep" school and a course at Leland Stanford. If he was to take that step, seeking new friends and new fortunes, why not take it now?
There was something more in life, Matt told himself, than just knocking around the world, meeting all kinds of trouble and getting the upper hand of it.