Evidently unaware that anything had happened the truck driver kept on down the cross road. Bob, remounting, pedaled for all he was worth toward the scene of the accident. As he rode swiftly he saw other figures approaching.
At the point where the motorcycle lay on its side, he was met by Al and Curt, who had been approaching from the opposite way, up the side road. “We decided to come and see Lang hop off,” Al explained as the trio ran toward Griff.
He was sitting up, a little shaken, a little dazed, when they approached. Bob, seeing that he did not appear to be seriously hurt, caught Curt’s arm. “Look here,” he said quickly, “I want to go with Lang. Don’t say I was following—you know—keep it quiet. I must get to see father and tell him——”
“All right. Don’t waste any time. Get out of sight. I’ll tell Al.”
Bob hurried off, as though he was in search of aid, and he felt, as he pedaled back toward the field, that Griff probably had been too much shaken to notice that Bob had come from the direction he had been riding, or deduce that Bob had followed him.
The watchman, and several others from the soda stand came running down the road. They called out as he approached and with a brief explanation that there had been a “spill” but that he thought it was not serious, Bob rode on.
He found Lang riding toward the plant, and swung his bicycle in at the gate and set it against the fence.
“What’s the trouble, up there?”
“Griff took a spill going around the back of a truck that came out of the side road. I think he’s all right.” Bob called out his answer to Lang’s shouted inquiry and saw his cousin ride on to investigate.
Bob, with some idea in his mind that he might crawl into the fuselage of the small speed ’plane, and, thus stowed away, be carried to the city from which his father had telegraphed, changed his mind. The close, smothery fuselage, subjected to the most violent rolling and heaving of the airplane’s progress, would probably make him ill. He preferred to stay outside, to see what happened, and to compel Langley to take him as a passenger.