Page:The fighting scrub, (IA fightingscrub00barb).pdf/132

 *ing. Then a motion of the arms grasping the wheel of the car sent Clif's heart into his throat. The driver was going to swing south, had already slowed slightly and was turning the steering wheel hard to the right. Squarely in the middle of the street was the wheel chair. Its occupant, unaware of the danger an instant before, now heard, and saw the car lurching around the corner scarcely forty feet away. For a moment irresolution stayed the hands on the wheels. Then, bending forward, Loring strove desperately to roll the chair to safety.

All this Clif saw ere he dashed forward. As he raced toward the boy in the chair, he was aware of the throbbing of the big automobile almost beside him, heard a spasmodic blast from the horn, and the screeching of hastily applied brakes. Then he had reached the chair and seized one arm of it, dragging it frantically toward the sidewalk. Almost simultaneously something huge and black rushed past, the wheel chair was almost wrenched from his grasp, there was a sharp report, and the metallic sound of crashing glass and silence!

Coming swiftly, the car had been unable to make the turn abruptly, and had swung well toward the left side of Oak Street. The building on the corner had obscured the driver's view of what lay ahead until he had started to turn. Then he had desperately avoided the wheel chair by swerving hard to the right, grazing the object in passing and, in spite of brakes, had swung onto the sidewalk, demolishing an iron hitch