Chapter VII: Nothing Doing in Sykestown

Cameron, by a happy blunder, finally located the trouble, and repaired it. McGlory had a little knowledge of motors and he might have helped, but his dejection was so profound that all he could do was to sit in the car, muttering to himself.

"Buck up, McGlory," said Cameron, jerking the crank and noting that the motor took up its humming tune as well as ever. "While there's life there's hope, you know. We'll be able to do something yet."

"Oh, yes," gibed McGlory. "With a car going fifty miles we'll be able to overhaul a flying machine doing sixty."

"Of course," went on Cameron, getting into the car and starting, "we can't expect to overtake Matt unless something should go wrong with the aëroplane, but----"

"If anything goes wrong with the aëroplane then Matt breaks his neck. That won't do."

"I was going to say," proceeded the lieutenant as he teased the car to its best pace, "that we're to meet Matt at Sykestown in the morning. If anything is to happen to him, McGlory, it will be on the other side of Sykestown. Calm down a little, can't you? We'll reach the meeting point by morning, all right, and then we can tell Matt about the message from Mrs. Traquair."

The cowboy had not thought of this point, and yet it was so simple that it should have occurred to him before. Instantly his worry and alarm gave way to hope.

"Right you are, Cameron," said he. "When I go into a taking I always lose my head and slip a cog. We can't catch up with Matt. That's out of the question. As you say, though, we can sure find him in Sykestown."

The car swung into Minnewaukon, and there was a momentary pause for counsel.

"If Matt's taking the air line, as he said he was going to do," remarked Cameron, "then he'll be cutting the corner between here and Sykestown. There are poor roads and bad hills on that lap, and we'll make better time by taking the longer way round and going by Carrington."

"Maybe he didn't go that way," said McGlory. "If he has to come down for anything he'll have to have a fairly good stretch of trail in which to get a start before the flying machine can climb into the air. Like as not he went by way of Carrington, himself."

"We'll soon settle that," and Cameron made inquiries of a man who was standing beside the car.

Yes, the man had seen the aëroplane. It had passed over the town and went southwest.

"That settles it, McGlory," said Cameron. "Matt cut the corner. If he'd gone by way of Carrington he'd have started south."

"He's taking a big chance on his machine going wrong," muttered the cowboy, "but Matt can take more chances and come out right side up than any fellow you ever saw. It's Carrington for us, though."

Cameron headed the machine southward and they flickered out of Minnewaukon like a brown streak. Nothing went wrong, and they hit a steady, forty-mile-an-hour gait and kept it up through Lallie, Oberon, Sheyenne, Divide, and New Rockford. Here and there was an occasional slough which they were obliged to go around, but the delay was unavoidable.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they reached Carrington, and they congratulated themselves on the ease with which they had covered so much of their journey.

They halted for an hour in Carrington, Cameron and McGlory going over the machine and replenishing the gasoline and oil. At four they pulled out for Sykestown, and had barely crossed the Carrington town line before accidents began to happen.

First, a front tire blew up. A flying stone gouged the shoe and the inner tube sprung a leak.

An hour was lost repairing the damage. Nevertheless, the cowboy kept his temper well in hand, for they had not planned to reach Sykestown and meet Matt before morning.

A mile beyond the place where the tire had blown up the electricity went wrong; then the carburetor began to flood; and last of all the feed pipe became clogged.

"Let's leave the old benzine-buggy in the road and walk the rest of the way," suggested McGlory. "A pair of bronks and a wagon for me, any old day."

It was eleven o'clock at night when they got into Sykestown and pulled to a halt in front of the only hotel in the place. There was no garage, and Cameron backed the car under an open shed in the rear of the hotel.

While he was doing this, McGlory was making inquiries regarding Motor Matt.

"Nothing doing, Cameron," announced the cowboy, meeting the lieutenant as he came into the hotel.

"Matt hasn't got here yet?"

"He hasn't been seen or heard of. That's some queer, I reckon. He took a crosscut. Coming at sixty miles an hour, barring accidents, he ought to have reached Sykestown by noon."

"Well," said the optimistic lieutenant, "it's a good thing to know he hasn't got here and gone on without waiting for us. Matt knows we were not to meet until morning. He may be waiting at some farmer's shack, somewhere out of town. Let's get a hand-out and then go to bed. Wrestling with a refractory motor is tiresome work."

This was sensible advice, and the cowboy, although he did not accept Cameron's explanation of Matt's absence, concluded to accept it.

McGlory was up at dawn, however, inquiring anxiously for news. There was none. Taking a chair out in front of the hotel he sat down to wait.

An hour later, Ping came scuffling around the corner of the hotel.

"Where have you been, Ping?" McGlory asked.

"My makee sleep in choo-choo car," replied the Chinaman, taking an upward squint at the sky with his slant eyes. "Cloud Joss no makee come, huh?"

"Nary, Ping. I'm which and t'other about this, too. We're up against a rough game of some kind, and I'd give my eyeteeth to know what it is."

"Plaps Motol Matt makee lescue Melican lady all by himself."

"There's no Melican lady to rescue, and that's the worst of it."

At this moment Cameron issued from the hotel. He had his khaki jacket over his arm and the handles of a brace of six-shooters showed above the tops of his hip pockets.

"No sign of Matt yet, eh?" he asked cheerily.

"Nary a sign, Cameron," replied McGlory. "Unless something had gone crossways, he'd have been on here early this morning."

"I don't believe in crossing bridges until you get to them," said Cameron, dropping down on a bench. "You know Motor Matt better than I do, McGlory," he went on, "but I'm well enough acquainted with him to know that he keeps his head with him all the time and never gets rattled."

"He's the boy on the job, all right," averred the cowboy, with a touch of pride. "But what good's a cool head and plenty of pluck if a flying machine up-ends with you a couple of hundred feet in the air?"

Cameron grew silent, and a little bit thoughtful.

"There was a still day yesterday," said he, at last, "and only a bit of a breeze this morning. It's not at all likely that any accident of that kind happened."

"I'm not thinking of that so much as I am of Murgatroyd and his gang," went on McGlory. "That bunch of tinhorns may have laid for Matt somewhere between Sykestown and Minnewaukon."

"Hardly. They wouldn't be expecting him by air ship, and across country, the way he started."

"Hackberry, you remember, wanted him to get a horse and ride cross country."

"But Matt told Hackberry he expected to reach Sykestown by train. Because of that, no matter what the plans of Murgatroyd and his men were, they'd have to give over their designs and lay for Matt somewhere between here and the Traquair homestead."

"That's where you're shy some more," said McGlory. "Hackberry, coming on horseback from Minnewaukon, hasn't got to where Murg is, yet, so he can't have told him what Matt was expecting to do. Take it from me, Cameron, there was a gang on that cross-country road, last night, layin' for our pard."

"Well, if there was," returned Cameron easily, "then Motor Matt sailed over their heads. But all this is mere guesswork," he added, "and mighty poor guesswork, at that. We'll just wait here until Matt shows up."

There was a silence for a while, Ping getting a crick in his neck holding his head back and watching the sky toward the north and east.

"No makee see Cloud Joss," he murmured.

Neither McGlory nor Cameron paid much attention to the report. If Matt had been coming in the aëroplane the excitement in the town would quickly have apprised them of the fact.

"I can't understand," said Cameron musingly, "what this Murgatroyd hopes to accomplish by all this criminal work."

"You can't?" echoed McGlory. "Well, Matt butted into Murgatroyd's game and knocked his villainous schemes galley-west. That don't make Murg feel anyways good, does it? Then there's Siwash Charley. He's a tinhorn and _mucho malo_, and there's no love lost between him and the king of the motor boys. What's the result if Murg and Siwash get Matt in their clutches?" The cowboy scowled and ground his teeth. "You ought to be able to figure that out, Cameron, just as well as I can."

"Murgatroyd isn't anybody's fool," said Cameron. "He's not going to go to any desperate length with Matt and run his neck into a noose."

"Murg won't, but what does Siwash Charley care? He's already badly wanted, and he's the sort of cold-game gent who does things when he's crossed. Murg will play safe, but Siwash is apt to break away from Murg's plans and saw off with Matt in his own way. What that way is I'm afraid to think about, or----"

The noise of a motor was heard up the road, accompanied by the hollow rumble of a car crossing the bridge over Pipestem Creek.

"Another car coming this way," remarked Cameron, looking in the direction from which the sound came.

Buildings intervened between the front of the hotel and the bridge, effectually shutting off the view.

A moment after Cameron had spoken, however, a big car came around a turn in the road and headed for the hotel.

The car carried two passengers--a man and a woman. The moment the car hove in sight, the proprietor of the hotel came out and leaned against the wall of the building near the door.

"I don't know what's to be done now," muttered the proprietor. "There's only room in that shed o' mine for one automobile, an' your machine is there. What'll Mr. Murgatroyd do with his car?"

"Murgatroyd!" exploded Cameron, jumping to his feet.

"Murgatroyd!" cried McGlory.

"Woosh!" chattered Ping. "We no ketchee Matt, mebbyso we ketchee Murg, huh?"

Up to that moment there had been nothing doing in Sykestown; but now, with startling suddenness, there seemed to be plenty on the programme.