A RACE AND A RUSE.

Carl, as he yelled his startling announcement, was standing up in the tonneau and pointing toward the place where the west and east roads came together, a mile farther on.

The stolen runabout, while Spangler had been at the hut, had doubled the fork of the trail. Running along the east road it had put about and was now charging along the west.

The Red Flier was facing the direction from which the runabout was coming, and would have to be turned.

"Get Tomlinson aboard, Gregory!" shouted Matt, dropping the Denver man's arm and springing to the front of the machine.

Frantically he turned the lever, then jumped for the driver's seat.

By that time, Gregory had got Tomlinson into the back of the Flier, and had scrambled for a place alongside of Matt.

"Can you run 'er?" he asked.

"Watch me," flung back Matt.

To make a turn, in that narrow roadway, called for plenty of skill, but it was accomplished swiftly. By the time the nose of the Red Flier was pointed the other way, however, the runabout was dangerously close.

Hank was still in front with the captive driver, and still overawing him with the revolver. Matt bent to his levers and steering-wheel. For him there was nothing but the road in front—his eyes saw nothing else.

But how could they hope to win that race, with a better car against them?

"She can do sixty," cried Tomlinson, from behind. "You know her, Gregory! Perhaps you'd better take the wheel."

Gregory had been watching Motor Matt sharply.

"King can forget more about driving a car than I ever knew, Mr. Tomlinson," said he. "Leave the thing as it is. If any one can get us out of this, it's King."

The Red Flier was going like the wind.

"Watch behind, Carl!" shouted Matt.

"Sure," answered Carl, "you bed you. Py shinks! Der odder car is slowing down aboudt vere ve vas. Ah, ha! Dere comes Spangler, oudt oof der blace vere you come, und he chumps by der car. Now dey're rushing ad us again! Himmel, how dey vas purnin' der vind! No use, Matt. Der Red Flier ain'd in it mit dot odder car."

"How's she going, Gregory?" cried Tomlinson.

Gregory bent forward over the speedometer.

"Fifty-eight," he answered.

No car ever worked more sweetly than did the Red Flier. She hummed like a swarm of bees, and Matt's trained ear told him that the machinery was working to perfection.

"She can do sixty!" again shouted Tomlinson. "We mustn't let the scoundrels overhaul us now! Five hundred dollars for you, King, if you keep us away from them!"

"Oof anypody can do dot," yelled Carl, "id vas Modor Matt. Hoop-a-la, Matt! Hid 'er oop, hid 'er oop! Ve don't vant to get ketched any more dan vat Domlinson does."

"They're gaining, they're gaining!" cried Pringle.

He had freed his hands himself, accomplishing it the moment Gregory had hustled Tomlinson into the tonneau. If Tomlinson or Gregory recognized Pringle as one of the robbers, they failed to say anything about it in the general excitement.

But if Tomlinson was urging Motor Matt onward, the desperate Hank was doing no less with the driver of the runabout. And Hank's urging carried with it a threat of life and death.

Foot by foot, steadily and relentlessly, the runabout drew closer to the touring-car. With frenzied eyes Tomlinson watched the closing gap. Presently the racer behind was so close that those in the Flier could see the grimly resolute look on Hank's face, and could hear the fierce words with which he threatened the man under his revolver-point.

"Who's got a revolver?" cried Tomlinson desperately.

"Here you vas!" Carl answered, and handed over the gun he had in his pocket.

"It's mine!" exclaimed Tomlinson, as he took the weapon.

"Ve got it from der feller vat heluped rop you."

It was hardly a time for explanations, but Carl made that one mechanically—for his thoughts were elsewhere.

Tomlinson lifted the gun, training it on the occupants of the car behind. Hank saw the move but never flinched.

"I wouldn't do that," he shouted. "We don't want to kill you, Tomlinson. That isn't part of the game. We want those pearls, and we're not going to be euchered out of them after all this fuss."

Then Spangler, from the rumble, leaned forward over the front seat of the runabout. He had picked up his own weapon from the place where Matt had dropped it, or else he had taken a second six-shooter from Hank's pocket. He leveled the gun at Tomlinson.

"Pull that trigger an' I'll fill ye fuller o' holes than a pepper-box!" he cried.

Gregory, reaching over from the front, caught Tomlinson's arm and jerked it down.

"You're mad, Mr. Tomlinson!" said he. "Don't take such a risk."

"What's our pace?" demanded Tomlinson, his iron-gray hair snapping about his face with the speed of their flight.

"Fifty-nine!"

"Then the other car is doing better than a mile a minute! A thousand dollars for you, King, if you land me, with those pearls, safe in Ash Fork!"

The hot blood went dancing through Motor Matt's veins. Could he do it? Reason told him that the feat was impossible, but——

A thought at that instant leaped through his alert brain. There was a chance—a long chance.

"Slide into this seat, Gregory!" he cried. "Careful, now. I'll hang to the wheel while you get under me."

"What are you going to do?" demanded the astonished Gregory.

"The best I can—and trust to luck."

A note of thrilling determination rang in Motor Matt's voice.

Gregory crawled and scrambled over the front of the lurching car and got into the driver's seat. Matt, relinquishing the wheel, went on his knees in the seat vacated by Gregory.

"Pringle," called Matt, leaning into the tonneau, "you have a bottle in your pocket?"

"Yes, I——"

"Give it here."

Pringle pulled a quart bottle from his pocket. It was half-full of liquor.

Matt drew the cork and spilled the whisky into the road; then, again on his knees, he studied the car behind.

The driver of the runabout was holding his car to a steady line. The left-hand wheels tracked the road a point two feet to the left of the trail of the Red Flier.

Standing in the car and bracing himself with his left hand, Matt raised the empty bottle in his right.

Crash!

The bottle, broken to fragments in the road, offered a danger-point for the car behind. The speed of the Flier had scattered the jagged glass, but most of it had gone to the place Matt had in mind.

Hank, hearing the crash, instinctively divined what had happened.

"To the right, to the right!" he roared, brandishing his revolver in the driver's face.

But the speed of the runabout was so great that swerving the car, before the danger-zone was reached, was out of the question.

One of the front tires hit the broken glass and instantly there came a sharp "pop." The runabout slewed around and the driver cut off the power and put on the brakes just in the nick of time to avoid a bad accident.

The Red Flier glided onward, leaping away from its defeated rival like a glittering streak.

Tomlinson, overcome with the tension of the struggle, collapsed in his seat with a breathless, "By gad."

"King," exulted Gregory, "you're the best ever!"

"Hoop-a-la!" gloried Carl, in a frenzy of delight. "Meppy Modor Matt ditn't do somet'ing dot time! Oh, I bed you! Be jeerful, eferypody, be jeerful! Modor Matt has safed der tay und von a t'ousand tollars. Yah, yah, yah!" and Carl flopped to an about face and shook his clenched fist at the car behind, now almost out of sight.

"Wonderful!" cried Tomlinson. "King, how did you ever manage to think of that?"

"How does he efer manage to t'ink oof eferyt'ing, hey?" asked Carl. "He has his headt mit him all der time. Dot's vy he cuts so mooch ice verefer he goes! Oh, he vas a pully-poy, you bed my life!"

"Well," said Tomlinson, "I'll not forget this."

"There's Ash Fork," spoke up Pringle suddenly, pointing to the right. "Just across the railroad-track there's a road leading down to the place. I guess you better stop here and let me out."

"Stop, Gregory," said Matt. "Pringle isn't going into town with us."

"Yes, he is!" averred Tomlinson, bristling. "He was one of the four men who held us up. I didn't recognize him at first, but I do now. Don't stop, Gregory."

"Mr. Tomlinson," said Matt, facing about, "I promised Pringle he should have his freedom if he told us what the robbers had done with you. But for the information he gave us, we would never have been able to get you away from that hut. I think he's entitled to something, don't you?"

"Is that the way of it?" asked Tomlinson.

Matt assured him that it was.

"Then," went on Tomlinson, "if you promised him his freedom, Matt, Gregory had better stop."

The car halted and Pringle, highly elated, jumped to the ground.

"Don't forget to leave my stuff where I told you, Pretzel," he called.

"Vell, I von't," answered Carl; "und don'd you forged to leadt some tifferent lives oder you vill findt yourseluf pehindt der pars yet."

"Oh, blazes! Say, I'll be wearing diamonds while you're still doing stunts back of the footlights."

"You vill be vearing shdripes, dot's vat."

"By-by, Wienerwurst!"

Carl gurgled and tried to get out of the car. Matt grabbed him and threw him back in his seat.

"Never mind, old chap," he said. "You're well rid of that fellow, and you ought to be thankful."

"I don'd like dot Wienerwurst pitzness," grunted Carl. "He vas rupping it in too mooch, py shinks. Don'd he vas der vorst pad egg vat you efer see?"

Just then Gregory switched on the spark, and the Red Flier glided into the branch road with the town well in sight.