"'Don't you--' I begun; but 'twas too late. He pressed, and away we went. We was eatin' up the road now, I tell you, and though I was expectin' every minute to be my next, I couldn't help admirin' the way the Cap'n steered. And, as for him, he was gettin' more and more set up and confident.
"'She handles like a yacht, Barzilla,' he grunts, between his teeth. 'See me put her around the next buoy ahead there. Hey! how's that?'
"The next 'buoy' was a curve in the road, and we went around it beautiful. So with the next and the next and the next. Bayport wa'n't so very fur ahead. All to once another dreadful thought struck me.
"'Look here!' I yells. 'How in time are we goin' to stop when we--OW!'
"The Bassett woman had pinched my arm somethin' savage. I looked at her, and she was scowlin' and shakin' her head.
"'S-sh-sh!' she whispers. 'Don't disturb him. He'll be frightened and--'
"'Frightened! Good heavens to Betsy! I cal'late he won't be the only one that's fri--'
"But she looked so ugly that I shut up prompt, though I done a heap of thinkin'. On we went and, as we turned the next 'buoy,' there, ahead of us, was another auto, somethin' like ours, with only one person in it, a man, and goin' in the same direction we was, though not quite so fast.
"Then I WAS scart. 'Hi, Jonadab!' I sings out. 'Heave to! Come about! Shorten sail! Do you want to run him down? Look OUT!'
"I might as well have saved my breath. Heavin' to and the rest of it wa'n't included in our pilot's education. On we went, same as ever. I don't know what might have happened if the widow hadn't kept her head. She leaned over the for'ard rail of the after cockpit and squeezed a rubber bag that was close to Jonadab's starboard arm. It was j'ined to the fog whistle, I cal'late, 'cause from under our bows sounded a beller like a bull afoul of a barb-wire fence.
"The feller in t'other car turned his head and looked. Then he commenced to sheer off to wind'ard so's to let us pass. But all the time he kept lookin' back and starin' and, as we got nigher, and I could see him plainer through the dust, he looked more and more familiar. 'Twas somebody I knew.
"Then I heard a little grunt, or gasp, from Cap'n Jonadab. He was leanin' for'ard over the wheel, starin' at the man in the other auto. The nigher we got, the harder he stared; and the man in front was actin' similar in regards to him. And, all to once, the head car stopped swingin' off to wind'ard, turned back toward the middle of the road, and begun to go like smoke. The next instant I felt our machine fairly jump beneath me. I looked at Jonadab's foot. 'Twas pressed hard down on the speed lever.
"'You crazy loon!' I screeched. 'You--you--you-- Stop it! Take your foot off that! Do you want to--!'
"I was climbin' over the back of the front seat, my knee pretty nigh on Bradbury's head. But, would you believe it, that Jonadab man let go of the wheel with one hand--let GO of it, mind you--and give me a shove that sent me backward in Henrietta Bassett's lap.
"'Barzilla!' he growled, between his teeth, 'you set where you be and keep off the quarterdeck. I'm runnin' this craft. I'll beat that Loveland this time or run him under, one or t'other!'
"As sure as I'm alive this minute, the man in the front car was Tobias Loveland!
"And from then on-- Don't talk! I dream about it nights and wake up with my arms around the bedpost. I ain't real sure, but I kind of have an idee that the bedpost business comes from the fact that I was huggin' the widow some of the time. If I did, 'twa'n't knowin'ly, and she never mentioned it afterwards. All I can swear to is clouds of dust, and horns honkin', and telegraph poles lookin' like teeth in a comb, and Jonadab's face set as the Day of Judgment.
"He kept his foot down on the speed place as if 'twas glued. He shoved the 'spark'--whatever that is--'way back. Every once in a while he yelled, yelled at the top of his lungs. What he yelled hadn't no sense to it. Sometimes you'd think that he was drivin' a horse and next that he was handlin' a schooner in a gale.
"'Git dap!' he'd whoop. 'Go it, you cripples! Keep her nose right in the teeth of it! She's got the best of the water, so let her bile! Whe-E-E!'
"We didn't stop at Bayport. Our skipper had made other arrangements. However, the way I figgered it, we was long past needin' a doctor, and you can get an undertaker 'most anywhere. We went through the village like a couple of shootin' stars, Tobias about a length ahead, his hat blowed off, his hair--what little he's got--streamin' out behind, and that blessed red buzz wagon of his fairly skimmin' the hummocks and jumpin' the smooth places.
And right astern of him comes Jonadab, hangin' to the wheel, HIS hat gone, his mouth open, and fillin' the dust with yells and coughs.
"You could see folks runnin' to doors and front gates; but you never saw 'em reach where they was goin'--time they done that we was somewheres round the next bend. A pullet run over us once--yes, I mean just that. She clawed the top of the widow's bunnit as we slid underneath her, and by the time she lit we was so fur away she wa'n't visible to the naked eye. Bradbury--who'd got better remarkable sudden--was pawin' at Jonadab's arm, tryin' to make him ease up; but he might as well have pawed the wind. As for Henrietta Bassett, she was acrost the back of the front seat tootin' the horn for all she was wuth. And curled down in a heap on the cockpit floor was a fleshy, sea-farin' person by the name of Barzilla Wingate, sufferin' from chills and fever.
"I think 'twas on the long stretch of the Trumet road that we beat Tobias. I know we passed somethin' then, though just what I ain't competent to testify. All I'm sure of is that, t'other side of Bayport village, the landscape got some less streaked and you could most gen'rally separate one house from the next.
"Bradbury looked at Henrietta and smiled, a sort of sickly smile.
