White Fire

  CHAPTER VII A RACE ACROSS THE DESERT

  Johnny was puzzled and not a little worried. The chummy roadster,equipped with connecting-rods of the new steel, which had carried themseven thousand miles without a mishap, lunged first to one side of theroad, then to the other. It leaped forward to bury itself in a cloud ofdust that lay deep as mud on the desert trail. To the right and left ofthem and before them, far as eye could see, was sagebrush. The air waspermeated with the odor of it.

  They were two hundred miles from anywhere, in the heart of the GreatAmerican Desert, and behind them, like a streak of fire, a long, low redcar was bearing down upon them. It was this car that puzzled and worriedhim.

  "Can't give her more gas, can you?" Pant asked hoarsely. "They're gainingfast."

  Pushing the dusty goggles up from the ridge of his nose, Johnny staredahead. There never was another such trail. In a land where rain neverfalls the roads rut, and the ruts fill with dust. Cars sink in to theaxles, and skidding, shoot to the other side, to fall into a deeper rut.

  "To go faster is suicide," Johnny groaned. "Guess it'll have to be afight!"

  "Mighty uneven one, too, probably," Pant muttered. "Don't stop till Itell you to; I'm getting into the back seat to have a look at them."

  Gripping the seat he made his way, tossed first this way, then that, tothe back of the car. There he remained with eyes fixed on the back trail.

  Rapidly Johnny ran over in his mind the circumstances which led up tothis moment. He had gone to the manager's office at the time appointed,and there had been given the car, equipped with the strangely valuableconnecting-rods. He had been instructed to draw on the company forexpense money when necessary, to report progress once a week, to make hisway to the Pacific coast and back.

  The outgoing journey had been wonderful. The speeding across broadplains, between waving fields of grain, the climbing of the Rockymountain and Cascade passes, circling up and up and up, with here ayawning canyon hundreds of feet beneath them, and here, not a hundredfeet above them, one of those perpetual banks of snow; all this had givenJohnny a new vision of the grandeur and beauty of his native land.

  The return trip had been uneventful until they had reached the westernedge of the Great American Desert. There in a garage, where they had lefttheir car for a change of tires and to secure a box lunch to take withthem in crossing, they had seen a man who roused Johnny's suspicions.

  "Did you see that fellow?" he had asked of Pant, as they left the garage,"the chap standing by the door?"

  "Some bird!" Pant had chuckled.

  "Looks like a gigantic frog," Johnny had smiled. "Did you notice whatprodigiously long fingers he had, and what spindly legs?"

  "I bet he could scratch his ear with his big toe all right," Pant hadlaughed. "Some contortionist, maybe."

  At the word "contortionist" Johnny had started. He recalled his struggleback there in the factory with the fellow who appeared to have all thestrange characteristics of a contortionist. So strong was the resemblancebetween this man and the one back in the garage he was tempted to turnback.

  But he had called himself fanciful and foolish, and had gone on with Pantfor their lunch.

  Upon returning to the garage, however, his first thought was of the car.The instant his eyes fell upon it a quick exclamation had escaped hislips, and he bounded forward.

  Dressed in a suit of unionalls, and bending over the engine, had been theslim stranger.

  "Hey, there! What's up?" Johnny had demanded.

  "Tunin' her up a bit. Why? What's worry'n' yuh?"

  Johnny eyed the stranger angrily.

  "That's our car. We didn't order any work done in it."

  "Your car?" The other had straightened up in amazement, real or cleverlypretended. "Why, then I'm workin' on the wrong jitney! Beg your pardon.I'll put her back in shape. Won't take but a minute."

  "I'll tend to it myself," Johnny had said rather shortly.

  "Oh! All right, brother. No quarrel about that!" The stranger hadgathered up his tools and had backed away.

  Johnny's heart had skipped a beat when he saw how close a shave it hadbeen; two of the connecting-rods were all but free from their fastenings,and the others might have been in a few moments more.

  "I'd like to have him pinched," he grumbled, "but what's the use. They'dsay we were crazy. You can't tell them the whole truth, and you can'thave a man arrested for working on the wrong car by mistake."

  Pant nodded a sympathetic assent.

  They had taken the desert trail with many misgivings. This roaring reddemon behind told them that their fears were well founded. They did notknow how many men there were in the car, but there were probably two totheir one, and the other men were doubtless heavily armed. There could beno doubting their purpose. They were after the steel.

  "Looks bad!" Johnny groaned, as he braced himself in the seat andprepared to give the car three more notches of gas, hoping against hopethe meanwhile that they would heave in sight of some sheep-herder's shackor some truck caravan coming from the other direction. Well he knew that,on this unfrequented road, the chance was slight.

  They were speeding up. The car swayed from side to side like a drunkenman. It tossed this way and that like a ship in a high sea. Now theycareened to the right, and, running on two wheels, plunged madly forward,to swing back and go whirling to the left.

  All this time Johnny, with hands grimly gripping the wheel, with eyesglued upon the road, was, in his subconscious mind, counting the cost. Ithad been his chance. Now he was going to lose. He had hoped that thistrip would mean much toward wiping out his debt of honor. That was allover now. He had made, he hoped, a good impression on his employer. This,too, would be forgotten. With the valuable steel parts stolen, the workof their weeks of travel would be lost. The secret formula, too, might bediscovered. And all this because he had not taken precaution to see thatthe wily stranger was clear of the neighborhood before they startedacross the desert.

  A hill loomed ahead. The slight climb ended in a broad, flat plateau.Here the alkali dust disappeared. Straight, hard and smooth for a mile,perhaps two miles, the road stretched.

  Johnny's heart gave a bound of hope. What was beyond the brow of thatplateau?

  All this time his mind was wandering back to Pant. Sitting there silentlyin the back seat, his eyes glued upon the road, he seemed oblivious toall else. There had been a time when Johnny would have considered himequal to the task of stopping the pursuers by some magic power. By theflash of a crimson light, which appeared to come from his very eyes, hehad seen him stop a hungry tiger stalking its prey. But those were thedays in which Pant wore a cap pulled well down and a pair of immenseblack goggles. There had been mystery behind this cap and those goggles.Pant without them seemed shorn of his magic power, like Samson when shornof his hair.

  Down the smooth, straight stretch of road they sped, and for one mile atleast the red demon gained not one single yard.

  But as they reached the end of that plateau, grim despair gripped theboy's heart. Far and away lay only the uneven volcanic ash and thesagebrush. Not a house, not an automobile, not a cattleman's pony dottedthe landscape, and from this promontory one might see miles.

  "Might as well wreck her." Johnny ground his teeth. "We're stuck here. Ifthey catch us they'll strip her, and you can't run a car withoutconnecting-rods. Old boat," he groaned, "we'll stick to the trail till wecrash or they run us down."

  The car gave a lurch, all but turned over, righted itself and shot downthe ridge.

  "Hey!" Johnny caught Pant's voice at his elbow. "Guess you can ease up abit now. No use takin' too many chances. I think by the looks of it,their car's on fire!"

  Johnny slowed down, then looked back. He could not believe Pant. Helooked again. It was true; above the dull brown cloud of dust was a whiteand black cloud of smoke.

  "Couldn't be the sagebrush?" said Johnny, rubbing his eyes.

  "Don't think so," said Pant, climbing
back into the front seat."Sagebrush wouldn't make that kind of smoke; besides, it's green andwouldn't burn." The car bumped along at a milder pace. The red demon, nowunmistakably ablaze, reached the crest of the plateau and stopped. Menswarmed out of her.

  "Four of 'em," Pant chuckled. "Fine chance we'd have had against 'em!"

  "They're waving at us," said Johnny, after a glance over his shoulder.

  "Let 'em wave. Think we're green, I guess. Expect us to come right backand play things into their hands. Be a car or something along here to-dayor to-morrow, sure. Won't hurt 'em to eat dust awhile. That's the jobthey meant to give us, all right."

  Ten miles farther on they stopped for lunch. As Johnny drew the lunch-boxfrom beneath the back seat, he noticed a long, slim leather case lying onthe floor of the car. As he picked it up, he was astonished at the weightof it.

  "What's this, Pant?" he asked in a surprised tone.

  "That? Why that"--Pant seemed unduly excited--"that's a little emergencycase I always carry with me."

  He put out his hand for it, and having it, at once fastened it to hisbelt beneath his jacket.

  "Emergency case?" thought Johnny. "I wonder what kind." But as usual heasked no questions.

  He was destined to remember that case and the unusual circumstances ofthe burning car many days later.