“Never mind about that, Billy. You go on to Krug’s Corner and get a stout rope. If you overtake the owner of the runabout you can give him a lift. See him, anyhow, and tell him we’ll take the runabout to New York and that he can have it whenever he wants it.”
“Don’t do it!” begged Billy. “I’ve seen enough of these hoodoo cars to know they’ll prove the death of somebody. Don’t let that runabout prove the death of you!”
“Go get the rope, Billy,” said Matt sharply, “and hustle back with it.”
There was that in the voice of Matt King which proved that he had made up his mind, and that there was no shaking his determination. With an ominous movement of the head, Billy started for Krug’s Corner.
“Pard,” remarked McGlory earnestly, “I reckon the runabout is heap bad medicine. Do you think you ought to mix up with it?”
“Are you going back on me, Joe?” asked Matt.
“Not so you can notice. I’d get on a streak of greased lightning with you, if you said the word, and help you ride it to the end of the One-way Trail, but I think this is too big an order for us. Sufferin’ thunderbolts! Why, pard, that car won’t mind the helm or do the thing it ought to do even when you pull the right thing. When it began to crawfish around the road, the reverse wasn’t on.”
“I don’t know about that. It’s on now,” and he looked down at the runabout. “I guess the man must have thrown on the reverse instinctively when the tire blew up. Think of rinsing the chalk from the outer tube with gasoline!” Matt laughed. “There was good cause for the tire going wrong, and there may be other good and sufficient causes for the machine’s sizzling around like it did. Anyhow, we’ll try it, and see how it will behave for us.”
“But how can we lay a course for the Malvern Country Club? Billy will have to show us.”
“Billy can tell us how to go, and we’ll get to the Country Club all right. Hello! What’s this?”