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At the end of a few minutes, he turned the starting crank. The multiple cylinders fired with a roar. He moved back behind the wrecked windshield where the steering gear stood. "Well, Miss Ship-wrecked Mariner," said he lightly, "where do you wish to be landed?" "Over there, if you please." Stella pointed to where the red roof of the bungalow stood out against the green. "I'm Mrs. Fyfe."
Lanyard drew attention to a dark serpentine line that lay like a dead snake upon the lighted surface of the road. Jules grunted in token of comprehension. Liane Delorme breathlessly demanded: "What is it?" "An old trick," Lanyard explained: "A wire cable stretched between trees diagonally across the road, about as high as the middle of the windshield.
"She's a-wettin' up that red lake a-plenty," observed Casey, squinting through the dirty windshield. "No trail around, either, on account of the lava beds. But I guess I can pull acrost, all right." Doubt was in his voice, however, and he was half minded to turn back and take the straight road to Vegas, which had been his first objective. But he discarded the idea.
"There's no danger," he declared, as soon as he came within speaking distance, "though how she got off as easily as she did is almost a miracle. The crushed front and top of the machine acted as a sort of protection for her. The cut on the side of the face must have been made by a splinter of flying glass from the windshield. What she is suffering principally from is shock, and that's no wonder.
When we were within a hundred yards of the hedge an officer in a trailing grey cloak stepped into the middle of the road and held up his hand. "Halt!" I jammed on the brakes so suddenly that we nearly went through the windshield. "Get out of the automobile and stand well away from it," the officer commanded in German. We got out very promptly. "One of you advance alone, with his hands up."
His glimpses of what lay below were only snatched ones. At last it was necessary to zoom far above the vegetation of the lower slopes, to reach an altitude safe enough to clear the peaks ahead. Since the air supply within the windshield was constant they need not fear lack of oxygen.
It went crashing into a clump of saplings and came to a stop with a smashed windshield and crumpled fenders, but the motor was still running. Lockley had braked by instinct. The other car raced away without pausing. Lockley sat still for a moment, stunned by the suddenness of the mishap. Then he raged. He got out of the car.
There had been no suspicion of Mateo's cabin and the family that lived there in squalid content. The incident was closed. But Johnny slumped down in the seat again and glowered through the little, curved windshield at the crisply wavering leaves beyond the Thunder Bird's nose. He was not a fool, any more than he was a crook.
With some trouble Casey managed to button down the curtains and sat huddled on the front seat, watching through a streaming windshield the buffeted wilderness. He was glad he had not unloaded his outfit; gladder still that the storm had not struck which he was traveling.
But before they had gone another block Burke deemed it safe to stop. He signaled Van Nostrand, who shut off the power of the miraculous car almost as easily as he had started it. Burke nearly shot over the windshield with the momentum. "Some car!" he grunted. "You make it behave better than a horse, and I think it has more brains."
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