Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/259

 my horror beheld the strained, triumphant face of one demon within twenty feet of our hind wheels, and his firm gaze sent my timid orbs to the right-about.

"Actually, sir, I was frozen. Then I gave one piercing yell, so shrill and touching that the head-man nearly stumbled, while Tib, thinking I had been punctured, moved to throw us into the low speed. Then he appreciated the cause of my inquietude, and gluing his eyes on the train let out about seven notches.

"How we bounced! How I poured out fervid thanks for the brave American tires! For, although the Bally Bloomer was a French car with an English master, her rubbers were bought over here.

"Of course it wasn't on the cards that any man could hurdle a car as Tib was doing without going to join all of his departed forebears. We both knew it, and yet the old sport kept up the pressure and grazed chunks of lava slag by the width of a rooster's eyebrow.

"‘Can I chauff!' he choked, hysterically, bowing his bare head so the whistling wind parted his brown locks at the crown and revealed a dollar-sized piece of his scalp.

"I turned again and saw we had left them some distance, and was beginning to cheer when Tib