Page:Three speeds forward.djvu/58

 course, I had Olaff along, and I can't tell you what a comfort and consolation he was to me. He is a Great Dane, and everybody is afraid of him because he is so big and fierce, and he crowds up a car like a trunk, and has a large, meaty tail there never seems any room for. But, in a tight place, I'd rather have Olaff than any person I know, for he takes being a dog seriously, and would positively have liked to meet a mountain lion, just to show what he could do to it.

So Olaff sat and wagged his tail in the road, while I stripped off the transmission cover and felt inside. The metal band around the low-gear drum had fractured, and it didn't take two looks to see that this part of the outfit had gone out of business. It was made of a special imported unfracturable phospher-something bronze, slotted for lubrication, and I guess the manufacturers must have overdone the slots. Anyway, it was cracked. Even Olaff could see that as he put up his paws and gazed down at it with his head against