Page:Fairview Boys and their Rivals.djvu/14

10 the way it was headed that made Frank realize that something must be done. The machine was tearing up the earth, and running against rocks, and bumping past trees, directly at the edge of the bluff road.

"If it keeps on that way," said Frank to himself, "it will go over the edge of the bluff."

If that happened the auto would be wrecked. It would roll over and over down quite a steep slant until it reached Rainbow Lake.

"Don't get in! don't get in!" shouted Sammy, his eyes nearly bolting out of his head, as he saw no chance to stop the auto.

Frank could hardly have jumped into the machine, it wobbled about so. But he reached its side, ran along with it, and then jumped to the step.

Once Frank had been with his uncle when his auto, turning a sharp curve, nearly ran into a great load of hay blocking the road. Frank remembered that his uncle had acted as quick as lightning. He had shot out his hand and grasped the side brake, at the same time turning off the power at the wheel.

"That was a narrow graze," his uncle had told him, as the machine stopped short. He called it "killing the engine." All this was in Frank's mind as he now gave the brake of the runaway auto a quick wrench and at the same time shoved back the controls on the steering wheel. As a sway of the auto threw him off the step, the chug! chug! of the machine stopped, and so did the auto itself.

The big red car had one wheel wedged between two rocks. Frank breathed pretty hard as he noticed that had the auto gone ten feet farther, it would have toppled over the cliff.