“Then you’re about ready to admit there’s a demon in control of the car?”
“I don’t believe in demons.”
“If a car won’t stop when it ought to stop, and if it won’t go straight when you’re steering that way, and if it backs up when everything is set for going ahead, I’m a Piute if I don’t think there’s something else got a hand in running it.”
Matt was silent. He was facing a proposition that was new to him, but he was dealing with motor details with which he was perfectly familiar. Here was an ordinary four-cycle engine, and an ordinary float-feed carburetor; the transmission was of the common sliding-gear variety; the fuel tank was under the seat, and the gasoline was fed into the engine by gravity. Why was it that the different parts did not coöperate as they should?
“Come on, Joe,” said Matt, putting on the coat which he had laid off while at work, “we’ll go back to Krug’s and see if my tinkering has helped any.”
“I can’t pass up the invitation, pard,” returned McGlory, “but if any one else gave it to me, I’d say manana. Every minute we’re aboard that runabout, we’re sitting on a thunderbolt that’s not more than half tame. Here goes, anyhow.”
The cowboy climbed to his place, and Matt “turned the engine over” and got in beside him. Then they backed until the runabout was headed the other way, whereupon Matt changed speeds and they slid over the pike as easily as a girl tripping to market. No. 1313 behaved like the prince of cars. No one, from its present performance, could ever have dreamed that it was anything but the mildest-mannered little buzz wagon that had ever come out of the shop.
“I’m stumped,” declared McGlory. “She acts as though she had never thought of such a thing as taking the bit in her teeth. I reckon, pard, you must have done something that started her to working in the right way.”
“I’ll never be able to understand how she ran for half a mile without any gas in the cylinders or any spark to cause an explosion,” said Matt, as he came to a stop in front of Krug’s. “Return the rope, Joe,” he added, “and see if you can find the owner of the runabout.”
McGlory was gone for ten minutes. When he came back he reported that the man who had cut loose from the runabout was nowhere to be found, and that a fellow answering his description had been taken into a car by a friend and had motored off in the direction of Hempstead.