No. 363. NEW YORK, December 4, 1909. Price Five Cents.
A HOODOO MACHINE;
OR,
The Motor Boys’ Runabout No. 1313.
By STANLEY R. MATTHEWS.
[CHAPTER I.
THE CAR THAT WOULDN’T BEHAVE.]
“Sufferin’ whirligigs, Pard Matt! Look at that bubble wagon! Is it trying to turn a handspring, or ‘skin the cat,’ or climb that telephone pole? I reckon the longhorn up front don’t know how to run the thing. Either that, or else he’s ‘bug’ with a big ‘B.’”
“I should say it’s the car that’s ‘bug,’ Joe. The driver seems to be trying to control the machine in the proper manner, but it won’t be controlled. What’s your notion of it, Billy?”
“Hoodoo car, Matt. Look at the number of her—thirteen thirteen. Double hoodoo. You couldn’t expect no chug wagon with such a tag to behave anything else than disgraceful. Lo and behold you, if she don’t turn turtle in the ditch before she goes many more miles then my name’s not Billy Wells. Watch ’er; keep your eye on ’er an’ I’ll bet you see something.”
The three boys were driving along the Jericho Pike well toward Krug’s Corner—Matt King, Joe McGlory, and Billy Wells. Billy belonged with a New York garage from which the boys had secured the touring car they were using that morning. He was a living road map, this Billy, and could go anywhere up-state, or over Long Island, or in Jersey on the darkest night that ever fell, and he knew every minute just where he was.