"Yes," laughed Matt, leaning the wheel against the wall, "and a little more than I was expecting. I was stopped by Merton and seven of his friends, just this side of the asylum and——"
"By Merton!" cried Lorry.
"Sufferin' brain-twisters!" exclaimed the cowboy. "How could that be? Why, pard, I left Merton on Third Lake, in the Dart."
"Merton must have come ashore, Joe, pretty soon after you left. He picked up seven of his friends somewhere and started around Fourth Lake to have a talk with me at the boathouse. They saw me coming down the hill from the point, stopped the automobile around a bend, tied handkerchiefs over their faces and stopped me with a fence rail. Before I fairly realized what was going on, the eight of them had me off the wheel and into the timber."
"What an outrage!" growled Lorry. "You're getting more than your share of rough work, Matt, seems to me. What did those fellows want?"
Matt pulled out a lunch box of generous size, opened it on the workbench and invited his two companions to help themselves.
"I went into town to send a telegram for a new propeller," he observed, "but I didn't even take time to stop at a restaurant for a meal."
"No matter what happens," said Lorry admiringly, "you never forget anything. But go on and tell us what Merton and those other chaps stopped you for."
"They were trying to run in a rhinecaboo of some sort. I'll be bound," averred McGlory.
"The plain truth of the matter is, fellows," declared Matt, "Merton and his crowd are scared. They offered me two hundred dollars to leave town at once and never come back."