[CHAPTER I.]
ON THE MOUNTAINSIDE.
"Sufferin' treadmills! Say, pard, here's where I drop down in the shade and catch my breath. How much farther have we got to go?"
"Not more than a mile, Joe."
"We must have gone a couple of hundred miles already."
"We've traveled about six miles, all told."
"Speak to me about that! A mile up and down is a heap longer than a mile on the straightaway. We've been hanging to this sidehill like a couple of flies to a wall. What do you say to a rest?"
"I'm willing, Joe; and here's a good place. Look out for that tree root. It's a bad one, and runs straight across the road."
Motor Matt and his cowboy pard, Joe McGlory, were pop-popping their way up a steep mountainside on a couple of motor cycles. They were bound for the Mountain House, a hotel on the very crest of the uplift.
A day boat had brought them down the Hudson River from Albany, and they had disembarked at Catskill Landing, hired the two machines, and started for the big hotel.