"Gad-hook it all!" cried McGlory; "it was a frame-up! A trick to run off our wheels!"
Although they were only a few moments regaining the road, the lamps of the two motor cycles were gleaming more than a hundred feet away.
"Stop!" yelled Matt, racing down the road.
His answer was a raucous laugh—such a laugh as they had heard before. And then came the words, bellowed hoarsely:
"Leave the Eye o' Buddha alone!"
After that silence, during which the gleaming lamps turned an angle in the road and were blotted from sight.
"Seems to me," said McGlory grimly, "I've heard that voice before."
Motor Matt did not reply at once. Perhaps his feelings were too deep for words.
"And I was expecting something, too!" said the cowboy, in a spasm of self-reproach. "Sufferin' easy marks! Matt, some of the stuff from those glass balls must still be playing hob with our brains. Otherwise, how is it these backsets keep happening in one, two, three order? There go a pair of motor bikes that'll stand us in four hundred good big cart wheels. That was right, what you said before we left those wheels and flocked into the timber. That shot and those sounds of a scuffle did mean robbery. That's a lesson for us never to help a person in distress. Likewise it's a hint that we'd better pull out and leave the mandarin to manage his own troubles."
"It's a hint that we'd better go to Purling to-morrow and look for Grattan," and there was an unwonted sharpness in Motor Matt's voice that caused McGlory to straighten up and take notice.