  Johnny was puzzled and not a little worried. The chummy roadster, equipped with connecting-rods of the new steel, which had carried them seven thousand miles without a mishap, lunged first to one side of the road, then to the other. It leaped forward to bury itself in a cloud of dust that lay deep as mud on the desert trail. To the right and left of them and before them, far as eye could see, was sagebrush. The air was permeated with the odor of it. They were two hundred miles from anywhere, in the heart of the Great American Desert, and behind them, like a streak of fire, a long, low red car was bearing down upon them. It was this car that puzzled and worried him. “Can’t give her more gas, can you?” Pant asked hoarsely. “They’re gaining fast.” Pushing the dusty goggles up from the ridge of his nose, Johnny stared ahead. There never was another such trail. In a land where rain never falls the roads rut, and the ruts fill with dust. Cars sink in to the axles, and skidding, shoot to the other side, to fall into a deeper rut. “To go faster is suicide,” Johnny groaned. “Guess it’ll have to be a fight!” “Mighty uneven one, too, probably,” Pant muttered. “Don’t stop till I tell you to; I’m getting into the back seat to have a look at them.” Gripping the seat he made his way, tossed first this way, then that, to the back of the car. There he remained with eyes fixed on the back trail. Rapidly Johnny ran over in his mind the circumstances which led up to this moment. He had gone to the manager’s office at the time appointed, and there had been given the car, equipped with the strangely valuable connecting-rods. He had been instructed to draw on the company for expense money when necessary, to report progress once a week, to make his way to the Pacific coast and back. The outgoing journey had been wonderful. The speeding across broad plains, between waving fields of grain, the climbing of the Rocky mountain and Cascade passes, circling up and up and up, with here a yawning canyon hundreds of feet beneath them, and here, not a hundred feet above them, one of those perpetual banks of snow; all this had given Johnny a new vision of the grandeur and beauty of his native land. The return trip had been uneventful until they had reached the western edge of the Great American Desert. There in a garage, where they had left their car for a change of tires and to secure a box lunch to take with them in crossing, they had seen a man who roused Johnny’s suspicions. “Did you see that fellow?” he had asked of Pant, as they left the garage, “the chap standing by the door?” “Some bird!” Pant had chuckled. “Looks like a gigantic frog,” Johnny had smiled. “Did you notice what prodigiously long fingers he had, and what spindly legs?” “I bet he could scratch his ear with his big toe all right,” Pant had laughed. “Some contortionist, maybe.” At the word “contortionist” Johnny had started. He recalled his struggle back there in the factory with the fellow who appeared to have all the strange characteristics of a contortionist. So strong was the resemblance between this man and the one back in the garage he was tempted to turn back. But he had called himself fanciful and foolish, and had gone on with Pant for their lunch. Upon returning to the garage, however, his first thought was of the car. The instant his eyes fell upon it a quick exclamation had escaped his lips, and he bounded forward. Dressed in a suit of unionalls, and bending over the engine, had been the slim stranger. “Hey, there! What’s up?” Johnny had demanded. “Tunin’ her up a bit. Why? What’s worry’n’ yuh?” Johnny eyed the stranger angrily. “That’s our car. We didn’t order any work done in it.” “Your car?” The other had straightened up in amazement, real or cleverly pretended. “Why, then I’m workin’ on the wrong jitney! Beg your pardon. I’ll put her back in shape. Won’t take but a minute.” “I’ll tend to it myself,” Johnny had said rather shortly. “Oh! All right, brother. No quarrel about that!” The stranger had gathered up his tools and had backed away. Johnny’s heart had skipped a beat when he saw how close a shave it had been; two of the connecting-rods were all but free from their fastenings, and the others might have been in a few moments more. “I’d like to have him pinched,” he grumbled, “but what’s the use. They’d say we were crazy. You can’t tell them the whole truth, and you can’t have a man arrested for working on the wrong car by mistake.” Pant nodded a sympathetic assent. They had taken the desert trail with many misgivings. This roaring red demon behind told them that their fears were well founded. They did not know how many men there were in the car, but there were probably two to their one, and the other men were doubtless heavily armed. There could be no doubting their purpose. They were after the steel. “Looks bad!” Johnny groaned, as he braced himself in the seat and prepared to give the car three more notches of gas, hoping against hope the meanwhile that they would heave in sight of some sheep-herder’s shack or some truck caravan coming from the other direction. Well he knew that, on this unfrequented road, the chance was slight. They were speeding up. The car swayed from side to side like a drunken man. It tossed this way and that like a ship in a high sea. Now they careened to the right, and, running on two wheels, plunged madly forward, to swing back and go whirling to the left. All this time Johnny, with hands grimly gripping the wheel, with eyes glued upon the road, was, in his subconscious mind, counting the cost. It had been his chance. Now he was going to lose. He had hoped that this trip would mean much toward wiping out his debt of honor. That was all over now. He had made, he hoped, a good impression on his employer. This, too, would be forgotten. With the valuable steel parts stolen, the work of their weeks of travel would be lost. The secret formula, too, might be discovered. And all this because he had not taken precaution to see that the wily stranger was clear of the neighborhood before they started across the desert. A hill loomed ahead. The slight climb ended in a broad, flat plateau. Here the alkali dust disappeared. Straight, hard and smooth for a mile, perhaps two miles, the road stretched. Johnny’s heart gave a bound of hope. What was beyond the brow of that plateau? All this time his mind was wandering back to Pant. Sitting there silently in the back seat, his eyes glued upon the road, he seemed oblivious to all else. There had been a time when Johnny would have considered him equal to the task of stopping the pursuers by some magic power. By the flash of a crimson light, which appeared to come from his very eyes, he had seen him stop a hungry tiger stalking its prey. But those were the days in which Pant wore a cap pulled well down and a pair of immense black goggles. There had been mystery behind this cap and those goggles. Pant without them seemed shorn of his magic power, like Samson when shorn of his hair. Down the smooth, straight stretch of road they sped, and for one mile at least the red demon gained not one single yard. But as they reached the end of that plateau, grim despair gripped the boy’s heart. Far and away lay only the uneven volcanic ash and the sagebrush. Not a house, not an automobile, not a cattleman’s pony dotted the landscape, and from this promontory one might see miles. “Might as well wreck her.” Johnny ground his teeth. “We’re stuck here. If they catch us they’ll strip her, and you can’t run a car without connecting-rods. Old boat,” he groaned, “we’ll stick to the trail till we crash or they run us down.” The car gave a lurch, all but turned over, righted itself and shot down the ridge. “Hey!” Johnny caught Pant’s voice at his elbow. “Guess you can ease up a bit now. No use takin’ too many chances. I think by the looks of it, their car’s on fire!” Johnny slowed down, then looked back. He could not believe Pant. He looked again. It was true; above the dull brown cloud of dust was a white and black cloud of smoke. “Couldn’t be the sagebrush?” said Johnny, rubbing his eyes. “Don’t think so,” said Pant, climbing back into the front seat. “Sagebrush wouldn’t make that kind of smoke; besides, it’s green and wouldn’t burn.” The car bumped along at a milder pace. The red demon, now unmistakably ablaze, reached the crest of the plateau and stopped. Men swarmed out of her. “Four of ’em,” Pant chuckled. “Fine chance we’d have had against ’em!” “They’re waving at us,” said Johnny, after a glance over his shoulder. “Let ’em wave. Think we’re green, I guess. Expect us to come right back and play things into their hands. Be a car or something along here to-day or to-morrow, sure. Won’t hurt ’em to eat dust awhile. That’s the job they meant to give us, all right.” Ten miles farther on they stopped for lunch. As Johnny drew the lunch-box from beneath the back seat, he noticed a long, slim leather case lying on the floor of the car. As he picked it up, he was astonished at the weight of it. “What’s this, Pant?” he asked in a surprised tone. “That? Why that”—Pant seemed unduly excited—“that’s a little emergency case I always carry with me.” He put out his hand for it, and having it, at once fastened it to his belt beneath his jacket. “Emergency case?” thought Johnny. “I wonder what kind.” But as usual he asked no questions. He was destined to remember that case and the unusual circumstances of the burning car many days later. |
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