Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_), and text
enclosed by equal signs is in bold (=bold=).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
[Illustration: A freight train was almost at the crossing, and, unless
Motor Matt could check the runabout in its wild flight, it would surely
be demolished by the onrushing locomotive.]
* * * * *
BRAVE AND BOLD WEEKLY
_Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Copyright, 1909, by_
STREET & SMITH, _79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y._
=No. 363.= NEW YORK, December 4, 1909. =Price Five Cents.=
A HOODOO MACHINE; OR, The Motor Boys’ Runabout No. 1313.
By STANLEY R. MATTHEWS.
CHAPTER I. THE CAR THAT WOULDN’T BEHAVE.
“Sufferin’ whirligigs, Pard Matt! Look at that bubble wagon! Is it
trying to turn a handspring, or ‘skin the cat,’ or climb that telephone
pole? I reckon the longhorn up front don’t know how to run the thing.
Either that, or else he’s ‘bug’ with a big ‘B.’”
“I should say it’s the car that’s ‘bug,’ Joe. The driver seems to be
trying to control the machine in the proper manner, but it won’t be
controlled. What’s your notion of it, Billy?”
“Hoodoo car, Matt. Look at the number of her--thirteen thirteen. Double
hoodoo. You couldn’t expect no chug wagon with such a tag to behave
anything else than disgraceful. Lo and behold you, if she don’t turn
turtle in the ditch before she goes many more miles then my name’s
not Billy Wells. Watch ’er; keep your eye on ’er an’ I’ll bet you see
something.”
The three boys were driving along the Jericho Pike well toward Krug’s
Corner--Matt King, Joe McGlory, and Billy Wells. Billy belonged with a
New York garage from which the boys had secured the touring car they
were using that morning. He was a living road map, this Billy, and
could go anywhere up-state, or over Long Island, or in Jersey on the
darkest night that ever fell, and he knew every minute just where he
was.
Matt was doing the driving, and Billy sat beside him as guide,
counselor, and friend. In the back of the machine was McGlory.
That was Thursday. Matt and his chum were heeding a summons that
carried them toward the Malvern Country Club, near Hempstead. After
transacting their business at the Country Club--they did not know what
it was, but believed it would not take them long--they were planning to
return to Krug’s Corner for their noon meal, and then back to Manhattan
by Jackson Avenue and the Williamsburg Bridge. But plans are easily
made, sometimes, and not so easily carried out.
The day was bright, the roads were good, and the motor boys were
enjoying themselves. Well along the Jericho Pike they had come up with
a white runabout, two seats in front and a deck behind, and the actions
of this car aroused their curiosity to such an extent that Matt slowed
down the big machine in order that he and those with him could follow
and watch the performance.
There was only one passenger in the white car, and he was having his
hands full.
The runabout would angle from one side of the road to the other, in
apparent defiance of the way the steering wheel was held, and sometimes
it would go its eccentric course slowly and sometimes with a rush--so
far as those in the other car could see--without any change in the
speed gear.
The driver of the runabout worked frantically to keep the machine where
it ought to be, but the task was too much for him.
Once a telephone pole gave him a close shave, and once his
unmanageable car gave a sidewise lurch that almost hurled it into a
machine going the other way.
“What’s the matter?” Matt hailed.
The man in the runabout looked around with a facial expression that was
far from angelic.
“If I knew what was the matter with this confounded car,” he cried in
exasperation, “do you think I’d be side-stepping all over the road the
way I am?” Then, muttering to himself, he humped over the steering
wheel again.
“He’s happy--I don’t think,” chuckled McGlory. “The car’s getting on
his nerves.”
“A car like that would get on anybody’s nerves,” commented Billy. “The
number’s enough to set mine on edge. Thirteen’s unlucky, no matter
where you find it. That’s right. And when you get two thirteens bunched
together, you’ve sure got a combination that points a car for the scrap
heap. I wouldn’t hold down the cushions in that roadster for all the
money in New York. No, sir, that I wouldn’t,” and Billy shook his head
forebodingly.
“Oh, splash!” scoffed Matt. “When a car fools around like that, Billy,
there’s something wrong with its internal apparatus.”
“Matt,” went on Billy solemnly, “I’ve seen cars that hadn’t a thing
wrong with ’em, but they was just naturally crazy and never’d run
right. Steer ’em straight, an’ they’d go crooked; point ’em crooked,
an’ they’d go straight; throw on the reverse, an’ they’d go for’ard;
give ’em the third speed an’ they’d crawl; give ’em the first an’
they’d tear away like lightnin’--and all the while, mind you, the
engine was running as sweet as any engine you ever see. The Old Boy
himself takes charge of some cars the moment they’re sold and in a
customer’s hands. I’ve worked in a garage for five years, and I know.”
Matt laughed. McGlory laughed, too, but not so mirthfully. The cowboy
had a little superstition in his make-up and Billy’s remarks had left a
fleeting impression.
“Gammon, Billy, gammon,” said Matt. “If a car is built right, and works
right, it is going to run right. That stands to reason.”
“A lot of things happen,” insisted Billy, “that don’t stand to reason.
Now, take that runabout. The engine’s working fine--from the sound of
it. Eh?”
Matt admitted that, so far as the hum of the motor was concerned, the
machinery seemed to be doing its part.
“Well, then,” cried the triumphant Billy, “why don’t the blooming car
run like it ought to?”
“It’s the steering gear that’s wrong,” Matt answered, “not the engine,
or----”
Bang!
Just then the runabout blew up a forward tire. The machine tried to
turn a somersault, and its passenger went over on the hood and tried
to knock off one of the gas lamps with his head. When Matt brought the
touring car to the side of the runabout, and halted, the man was on his
feet, shaking his fist at the silent white tormentor.
“If I had a stick of dynamite,” he declared wrathfully, “I’d blow
this infernal machine to kingdom come! I’ve been fiddling around the
Jericho Road for two mortal hours, and I could have made better time if
I’d left the car and gone on afoot. But I’ll hang to it, and make it
take me where I’m going. By George, I’ll not be beaten by a senseless
contraption of tires, mud guards, and machinery.”
Matt had jumped out of the touring car and was sniffing at the damaged
tire.
“What makes that smell of gasoline?” he asked.
“I put in a tube this morning, and washed out the chalk with gasoline,”
said the man.
“Never use gasoline for cleaning the tubes,” counseled Matt. “Get all
the chalk you can from the outer tube, and then soak it in wood naphtha
or ordinary alcohol. No wonder your tire blew up. You left gasoline in
the shoe, and when it got hot, it mixed with a little air in the tube
and something had to happen. Have you got another shoe?”
“Yes.”
“And a jack?”
“Of course. When a man goes out with a car like this he ought to carry
a small garage around with him.”
“Well, we’ll help you get on the shoe.”
Matt and Billy worked. McGlory stood near, watching and talking with
the owner of the car.
After the tire had been repaired, Matt looked over the runabout
critically. Much to his amazement, he could find nothing wrong.
“It’s the double hoodoo,” whispered Billy; “that’s all that’s the
trouble.”
“Much obliged to you,” said the man, cranking up. “Now we’ll see how
she acts.”
He got in, went through the operations for a fresh start, but the
runabout began backing. While the man shouted, and said things, the
runabout backed in a circle around the big touring car, then dropped
rearward down a shallow embankment at the roadside--and its passenger
had another spill, out over the rear deck this time. For a second, he
stood on his head and shoulders, then turned clear over and made a
quick move sideways in getting to his feet. He was afraid, evidently,
that the runabout was coming on top of him. But the car, almost in
defiance of the laws of gravitation, hung to the side of the steep
bank, its position nearly perpendicular.
“Speak to me about that!” gasped McGlory.
Matt was scared. From the top of the bank he stood staring while the
man got out of the way.
“Are you all right?” Matt asked.
“No thanks to that fiendish machine if I am,” sputtered the man,
laboring frantically up the slope. “It has tried to kill me in a dozen
different ways since I left home with it. I’m done. Life’s too short to
bother with such an infernal car as that.”
Fairly boiling with rage, he started along the road on foot.
“Wait a minute!” shouted Matt. “Where you going?”
The man turned.
“Krug’s,” he answered. “I’ll get a decent, respectable car there to
take me on.”
“You can telephone to a garage from Krug’s,” suggested Billy, “and they
can send some one to get the runabout home.”
“I’m done with the runabout, I tell you. It can stay where it is until
the tires rot, for all of me.”
“I’ll agree to get it back to the city for you,” said Matt. “My name’s
King, Matt King, and I’m staying at----”
The man’s rage subsided a little.
“You’re Matt King?” he inquired.
“Yes.”
“I understand, now, how you happen to know so much about tubes. They
say you’re pretty well up in motors, too. Well, here’s where I give you
the job of your life. Matt King, I make you a present of that runabout.
Take it--but Heaven help you if you try to run it.”
Thereupon the man whirled around and strode off.
“Oh, I say,” yelled Matt, “you don’t mean it. Wait, and I’ll----”
But the man swung onward, paying no heed to what Matt was calling after
him.
Matt King turned and peered in amazement at his cowboy chum.
“Sufferin’ tenterhooks!” exclaimed McGlory. “You’re loaded up with a
bunch of trouble now, pard.”
“Come on,” urged Billy, moving toward the touring car with considerable
haste. “Don’t lay a finger on that runabout--don’t have a thing to do
with it.”
But Matt was face to face with a proposition that caught his fancy. A
refractory automobile! Never yet had he encountered a machine that had
got the best of him. And this runabout couldn’t do it--he was positive
of that.