The Motor Boys on the Border; Or, Sixty Nuggets of Gold

“I sure can!” exclaimed a stout lad, who was bending over in front of a big car, laboriously grinding away at the starting handle.

“Then do it,” advised a tall youth at the wheel. “Turn it over good and hard.”

“Yes, go ahead,” put in a good-natured looking chap in one of the rear seats. “We don’t want to stay here all day, even if it is a nice place.”

“All--right--here--she--goes!” panted stout Bob Baker, as he again turned the crank.

There was only the noise of the flywheel spinning around; a sort of cough and wheeze, but no whirr and throb that told of an explosion of gas in the cylinders.

“Oh, if you can’t get her started let me try!” exclaimed Ned Slade, the lad in the tonneau. “I thought you’d had practice enough, Bob.”

“That’s right,” remarked Jerry Hopkins, the lad at the wheel. “Keep at it, Bob, it’ll take off some of that extra flesh.”

“Oh, you----!” began the fat lad, and then he stopped to gaze in some astonishment at his chum, Ned, who had started to leave the rear seat, with the evident intention of trying his hand at the crank. For on Ned’s face there was a curious look as he gazed over Jerry’s shoulder at the switch, just under the overhang on the dashboard of the car. Then a broad grin illuminated Ned’s features, to be succeeded by a hearty laugh.

“Huh!” ejaculated Bob. “I don’t see anything to go into spasms over. If you think it’s so funny come out here and try it yourself. I never saw such a cranky car. It went all right a while ago, and now----”

“It’s all because you don’t know how to crank it--that’s the reason it’s cranky,” began Jerry. “I’ll show you----”

“No--don’t--Oh, ho! Sit still--Oh, me! Oh my! Wait until I get my breath--Oh dear!” and Ned with one hand on the steersman’s shoulder held his own side with the other to help repress his mirth.

“Well of all the----” began Bob, half in anger.

“No wonder he couldn’t crank it!” cried Ned. “You haven’t got the switch on, Jerry. There’s no current--Oh dear! and to think that Bob was breaking his back and never getting a spark----”

“Was that the trouble?” cried Jerry.

“It sure was,” replied Ned, and, stepping on the footboard he reached to the dash, and snapped on the switch which connected the batteries with the spark plug in the cylinder heads. “Now try it, Bob!” he called.

“Not much!” exclaimed the fat lad, with great determination. “I’m done--finished! If you fellows don’t know enough to throw on the switch after all these years of running a car, and then expect to sit there and grin your heads off while I break my back cranking, you’re mighty much mistaken--that’s all I’ve got to say. You may think it’s a joke, but I don’t! I’m through with you,” and turning on his heel, after flashing a look at his two chums, Bob Baker started off down the road afoot.

“Here, where are you going?” called Jerry, after him.

“Home!” was the short answer, “and I’m not going out with you fellows again in a hurry!”

Ned and Jerry looked at one another. It was the first time in a long while that there had been any serious difference among the three chums.

“Oh, come on back!” urged Ned, for he saw that Bob was very much in earnest. “Come on back.”

“Not on your life!” snapped Bob. “I’m through.”

“We didn’t mean anything,” went on Ned, starting after his friend. “But it was so funny to see----”

“Ha! Ha! Joke!” sneered Bob. “If it’s so funny write it out and send it to the humorous column. You won’t get another chance to laugh at me, though.”

“He’s mad, all right,” murmured Ned.

“Looks so,” agreed Jerry. “Oh, I say Bob!” the tall lad went on, “come on back. Honest, I didn’t know the switch was off. Come on back. It’s a good ways to Cresville, and we’ve only just started the run. Come on back, and you can steer, and I’ll crank up. And if we get a puncture Ned and I’ll put on a new tire, and you won’t even have to get out of the car. I mean it!”

The figure, stalking down the road in anger, was seen to hesitate the merest trifle. But Bob did not turn around.

“That almost fetched him,” said Jerry. “Say something, Ned.”

“We’ll stop at the first place we come to, and get a bite to eat, even if it isn’t noon,” shouted the lad who had discovered the disconnected switch. “That ought to do the business,” he added, in lower tones.

It seemed to be, for Bob halted, appeared to be considering the matter at length, and then turned around.

“Does all that go?” he demanded.

“Sure,” chorused Ned and Jerry.

“And about me not having to help sweat putting on a tire?”

“That’s right,” Jerry assured him. Bob came slowly back.

“All the same,” he spoke as he climbed into the tonneau, “it was no fun cranking a car with the switch off.”

“We agree with you,” said Jerry, winking at Ned with the eye concealed from his offended chum. “But it wasn’t intentional,” he added, soothingly, as he went to the crank. “Go ahead, Bob, you can steer if you want to.”

“I don’t know as I want to. If we get a puncture you might blame it on me.”

“All right, then I’ll take the wheel,” went on Jerry, as the motor throbbed and hummed when he had turned the crank, for the car, though a good one, was not a self-starter.

“But everything else goes,” proceeded Bob, as the machine glided smoothly down the road. “And we stop at the first place where we can get sandwiches and ginger ale. I’m hungry.”

“You always----” began Ned, but Jerry stopped him with a nudge in the ribs.

“Keep your foot on the soft pedal,” he advised, in a whisper, for the two lads were on the front seat, with Bob in the rear. “No use getting him ruffled again.”