Remember when the car jumped the track year before last and killed six or seven people?"

"Yes, but I'll take my chances with the trolley," replied Gordon. "There it goes now. I wonder if the fellows caught it."

"Sure. Anyway, we'll soon see. I can catch that trolley as though it was standing still!" Morris pulled down his throttle and the little car bounded forward with a deeper hum of its engine. Gordon grasped the arm of the seat beside him.

"Never mind!" he exclaimed. "I don't care whether they did or not, Morris! Pull her down!"

Morris obeyed, laughing. "Shucks," he said, "that wasn't fast. We were only going twenty-five or six miles an hour."

"How do you know?" grumbled Gordon, relaxing his grip.

Morris indicated the speedometer with his foot. "That thing tells you,"

he explained. "Watch the long hand. We're doing sixteen now. I'll hit her up a bit. There, see the hand move around?

Twenty-twenty-two-twenty-four--"

"That'll do, thanks! And for the love of mud, Morris, keep her away from this fence!"

"Why, there's five feet there," protested the driver.

"Y-yes, but the old thing wabbles so it gives me heart failure!"

"You just think it does," returned Morris. "I can keep her as straight as an arrow if I want to."

"Want to, then, will you?" laughed Gordon uneasily. "And-and here's another car coming, Morris. Hadn't you better slow down a little?"

"Say, you're an awful baby," commented the other. But he lowered the speed of the car still further and, to Gordon's relief, hugged the fence pretty closely while a big gray touring car shot by them in a cloud of dust. Morris turned a speculative, admiring gaze on it as it pa.s.sed.

"Thirty-five easily, she's making," he said. "Some day I'm going to have one like that. These little cars are all right to knock about in, but they're too light to get much speed out of."

"How fast do you want to run, anyway?" grumbled Gordon. "Isn't twenty miles an hour fast enough?"

"You wait till you run one and you'll see," laughed Morris. "Why, twenty miles will seem like standing still to you!"

"It's fast enough for me," sighed Gordon. "Besides, this road is so rough that-_Morris!_"

But Gordon's cry was too late. There was a b.u.mp, a crash, the sound of splintering wood, and--

CHAPTER VIII

ACROSS THE GULLY

Gordon raised himself on one aching elbow and looked dazedly about him.

Up the bank a dozen feet away lay the blue runabout on its side, one forward wheel-or the remains of it-thrust through a broken panel of the white fence that guarded that side of the road. A cloud of dust still hovered above the car, proving to Gordon that the accident had happened but the moment before. If it was not for that he could well have imagined that he had lain huddled up in a clump of bushes halfway down the steep bank for some time. His head was spinning wildly and he felt horribly jarred and bruised. But a tentative effort to get to his feet, while it was not successful because of dizziness, showed that at least he had no limbs broken. A second effort, made when the clouds had stopped revolving overhead like a gigantic blue-and-white pin-wheel, brought him staggering to his feet.

Strangely enough, it was not until he stood swaying unsteadily on the bank that he remembered Morris, or, rather, that he felt any concern for him. Anxiously then he looked about on every side. But no Morris was to be seen. Gordon called in a weak and shaky voice. There was no reply.

Summoning his strength, Gordon crawled slowly up the side of the declivity, pulling himself by bushes and gra.s.s-tufts until at last he was clinging limply to the fence rail. There he leaned for an instant and closed his eyes. He felt very much as if he was going to faint, and perhaps he would have had he not at that moment, just as he seemed about to go off into a deliciously fearsome black void, heard the sound of a low groan.

Gordon pulled himself erect, opened his eyes and tried to look about, but the sunlight was frantically hot and glaring and the dusty road and the helpless hulk of the overturned auto danced fantastically before him. It was a full minute before he dared attempt to again lift his head and look. Even then sight was uncertain. But he realized that the groans-he heard them quite plainly now, low and monotonous-came from the further side of the car. He squirmed through the stout rails and stepped dizzily out into the road. Then he saw Morris.

He lay half in and half out of the car, one arm stretched from him in the dust and the other caught between the spokes of the steering wheel.

Evidently the wheel had saved him from being thrown out as Gordon had been, but the latter, gazing with horror at the white face that seemed crushed against the dirt of the highway, surmised that it would have been better for Morris had he too been hurled over the fence. The dreadful thought that Morris was killed a.s.sailed Gordon, only to be banished by the comforting knowledge that dead folks don't groan.

Gordon cast despairing looks up and down the road. Not a team or person was in sight. Then he knelt by Morris and spoke to him. But only low, unconscious moans answered him. Panic-stricken for an instant, Gordon gazed helplessly, his wits quite deserting him. Then common-sense whispered and he drew a deep breath of relief and seized Morris under the shoulders. Tug as he might, though, he could not budge the limp body. Then he saw why. Morris had evidently started to leap from the car and had got his left leg over the side when the car struck. Now that leg was imprisoned with the whole weight of the runabout upon it. Again Gordon looked along the highway for a.s.sistance, but, as before, the road stretched in either direction empty and deserted. Off toward town a cloud of dust hovered, but whether it indicated an approaching vehicle or a farmer's wagon moving slowly toward Clearfield there was no knowing. Gordon set his lips firmly, striving to close his ears to Morris' groans, and tried to think what to do. Perhaps if he could find water he could bring Morris back to consciousness, but what use to do that so long as the boy was pinned there under the car? No, the first thing to do was to set him free, and Gordon strove to think of a way to do it. He didn't believe for an instant that he was capable of lifting that car and at the same time pulling Morris' leg from beneath it. In fact, he doubted if he was strong enough to raise the weight of it. To make certain, however, he tried. It did move a little, he thought, but there was no question of raising it. Then he recalled seeing automobilists lifting their cars with jacks to put on new tires. If Morris had a jack--!

In a moment he was struggling with the cover over the box at the rear of the seat. It was jammed at one corner and it took him a full minute to wrench it open. When he finally did, however, the lifting jack was the first thing he saw. It was a small contrivance, scarcely a foot high, and Gordon viewed it doubtfully as he hurried with it around to the side. Morris' leg was held down at the ankle by the edge of the turning-board and there was barely s.p.a.ce between the ground and the side panel of the car in which to slip the jack. But it went in finally and Gordon began to work the handle. There was a heartening click as the cogs slipped into place and a cracking of frame and varnish as the car slowly rose. Bit by bit it went and at last Gordon pulled the imprisoned leg out. And not an instant too soon, for there was a lurch, the jack toppled sideways and the car settled back again in the dust, a forward wheel spinning slowly around.

Gordon turned Morris over on his back, placed a seat cushion, which had toppled out, under his head and again viewed the road anxiously. In the distance the dust cloud had disappeared and the road was still empty. He groaned with disappointment and exasperation. Usually a half-dozen vehicles would have pa.s.sed in the ten minutes that had elapsed. To-day, because Morris' life perhaps depended on getting him to a doctor, not one appeared! Gordon again thought of water and looked around him. Only dry hillside met his gaze on one side and only the equally dry gully separating road from trolley track on the other. But sight of the track gave Gordon an idea. The cars ran every quarter of an hour or so and if he could somehow get Morris down the bank, across the wide gully and up the slope on the other side it would be only a matter of a few minutes to town. But the distance was a good two hundred and fifty yards, he calculated, and Morris was no light burden. And, to increase his difficulties, he himself was in poor shape to make the effort. There was nothing else for it, however, and Gordon hurried to the fence and viewed the descent. A little further along was a place where the bank had at some time loosened and fallen in a miniature landslide and toward that spot Gordon was presently making his way.

He tried carrying Morris in his arms, but after the first few yards he had to give up. Instead, he took him by the wrists and dragged him as he might have dragged a sack of potatoes. It was hard work getting him through the fence, but easier when that obstacle was negotiated, for the descent helped. At the bottom of the bank it was necessary to worm in and out between bushes, while briars caught at him and tripped him as he toiled backward toward the further side of the gully. Twice he stopped to regain his breath and mop his streaming face. And it was while he was taking his second rest that a buzzing, humming sound came to him from the direction of town, a sound that grew louder even while he turned to look. Far down the track, visible here for a half-mile, came one of the big trolleys, swaying from side to side and eating up the rails in its rapid flight. There was but one thing to do, and Gordon did it.

Dropping Morris' wrists, he set off at a run for the track. Once he tripped and measured his length in the briars, but he was up again in the instant, while, almost at hand as it seemed, the buzzing and throbbing of the rails sounded. When he finally reached the foot of the bank it seemed that he had not enough strength left to climb it. But climb it he did, somehow, with toes digging into the loose gravel and hands clutching at the infrequent tufts of gra.s.s or weeds. And when he reached the top and the side of the track the plunging car was almost up to him.

He knelt there on the edge of the embankment and waved his arms, shouting at the top of his exhausted lungs. A screech from the whistle sent its warning and then the big car was hurtling past him, the motorman casting a puzzled, indifferent glance as he shot by and the few pa.s.sengers turning inquiring faces toward the boy crouched beside the track. Dust enveloped him and a great despair crushed him, and he did what was perhaps the one thing that could have stopped the car. He crumpled up in a heap at the ends of the ties and then rolled, slowly at first and then gaining momentum as he went, down the gravel slope into a clump of bushes at the bottom.

The conductor, who had leaned outboard at the warning shriek of the whistle, had seen the boy and had kept his eyes on him as the car had gone past. "Some kid wants to get on," he explained to a pa.s.senger beside him on the rear platform, "but there's no stop here." Then his hand flew to the bell-cord. Boys didn't crumple up like that and go rolling down embankments for the fun of it! With a loud grinding of brakes the big car came shivering to a stop a hundred yards along the track. The conductor tugged again at the cord and slowly the car crept backward. By that time the pa.s.sengers were on their feet and the conductor was hanging over the steps. Then he had dropped and was plunging down the embankment in a cloud of dust and a cascade of loose gravel, the pa.s.senger on the platform following more carefully.

Gordon was already struggling to his feet when they reached him, and somehow he made them understand that some thirty yards away lay the unconscious form of Jonathan Brent's son. After that events were very hazy and confused to Gordon. Kindly hands pulled and lifted him up the embankment and into the car, where he subsided weakly on a seat. Voices asked questions and he tried to answer them. Someone caught sight of the overturned automobile and there was much pointing and much exclaiming.

And then three men came toiling across the ground below with Morris and others slid and stumbled down to help them, and almost at once the big car was pounding back the way it had come, its strident whistle shrieking above the hum of the rails in an incessant warning and alarm!

CHAPTER IX

MR. MERRICK BREAKS A PLATE

That was perhaps the quickest trip a Rutter's Point car ever made, and almost before Gordon realized that town had been reached, and certainly before he had fully recovered from his experiences, the big yellow-sided car was coming to a stop at the foot of B Street, from where it was but two short blocks to Brentwood. The prolonged and frantic whistling had summoned a knot of curious persons to the corner as the car trundled around the curve and there were plenty of willing hands to bear the still unconscious form the remaining distance.

Gordon, not a little faint and weak, followed slowly. Someone had sped ahead and when the little throng reached the house anxious faces were already at the doorway. Gordon remained without and soon the men who had carried Morris inside returned to linger about the door and await the doctor's verdict. The latter reached the gate a minute later, and, leaping from his buggy, hurried up the walk, his black bag swinging briskly.

There was a long wait after that. The accident was discussed in low voices by the small gathering outside and Gordon was forced to go through his story again. Presently he left the front steps and wandered around to the side of the house. From an upper window came the low mutter of voices. Near at hand was a rustic seat, placed against the wall of the screened porch, and on this Gordon subsided with a big sigh of relief. Inside the house a telephone bell rang shrilly. Footsteps hurried. The voices in the room upstairs still came indistinctly through the open window. It was pretty late, Gordon reflected, and he ought to be at home. His father would be angry with him if he was late for supper. But he didn't want to go until he had heard whether Morris was going to get well. Meanwhile, it was fine and comfortable in the corner of the rustic seat and he would just close his eyes a minute--

Someone was shaking him gently and calling "Gordon! Wake up!" He stretched and opened his eyes. "Yes'm," he muttered sleepily. But it couldn't be morning, for it was almost dark and-and where was he? He sat up quickly then and gazed about him in blank surprise until his roaming glance encountered the smilingly concerned face of Louise Brent bending above him. "Oh!" he said, recollection coming to him.

"Have you been here all the time?" asked Louise. "You poor boy!"

"I-I must have fallen asleep," admitted Gordon sheepishly. "How-how is he, Louise?"

The girl's face went suddenly serious in the twilight. "He's pretty badly hurt," she said. "One leg is broken and he hurt his head horribly, Gordon."

"Is that all?" he asked anxiously.

"They think so. Seems to me it's quite enough, though."