Page:Fairview Boys and their Rivals.djvu/13

Rh "Don't know. Let's find out," replied Sammy, and both hurried on.

"The mischief!" shouted Sammy.

He, too, halted. Frank joined them, and the three lads for a moment stood looking in wonder down the slanting road.

"It's a runaway automobile," cried Sammy.

"And a boy in it," added Frank.

"Whew I there's a tumble," shouted Bob, dancing up and down in a state of great excitement. Not fifty feet away from them, near a vacant house, an automobile was coming towards them. A boy in its front seat seemed to have been trying to turn around. When Bob and his chums first caught sight of the machine, they saw that this boy was trying to stop it, but he did not seem to know how to go about the task.

In some way he had gotten mixed up on the steering gear, and the auto crossed the road sideways. As it reached the edge of the road, its front wheels struck a fallen tree. As the auto passed over the log, there was a big jolt. The boy in the machine was lifted up in his seat, and either jumped or fell flat into a great puddle of mud.

"Frank," cried Bob, "see where it's headed!"

"Say, it's a goner!" gasped Sammy.

Frank was the only one of the three who knew much about an automobile, and that was very little. An uncle of his owned a machine, and he had spent a day or two lately with his relatives at Fairview. Frank had gone on several runs with his uncle. He had noticed how his relative had handled the automobile, but in a general way only. As he ran towards the machine now, he hardly knew what he should do to stop it.

The runaway automobile was not going very fast. It was