CHAPTER VIII.
A RACE WITH A ROCK.
The car that Nick Carter drove was good for a mile a minute on any sort of road. He did not push it to anything like that speed now, with a yawning precipice only a few yards away from him on one side, and numbers of stones, gaps, and rough places under the wheels.
He moved at a good, comfortable pace, however, for he knew that the six bandits who had left the cave could not be far away, and that they would start in pursuit as soon as Gaspara knew what had happened.
“Gaspara was away when you got out, I suppose?” asked Chick.
“Yes. If he had been there, it would not have been possible to escape at all, I think.”
“We’ll get him later, I suppose?”
“If it seems worth while,” replied Nick, letting out an extra link on the speed of the automobile.
“We’ll make the little town of Paron, where Mala is, in about an hour, even at this speed,” observed Patsy, settling back comfortably in his seat. “Shall we have time to give Mala his, chief?”
“I do not expect to have leisure for Mala,” returned Nick Carter. “My business now is to get to Penza in as short a time as possible.”
“This piece of road we are reaching now is in full view of the hill where the cave is,” observed Chick.
“I see it is. We’ll go through in a hurry.”
Nick Carter opened the throttle still wider, and the great machine leaped forward like a mettlesome horse that had been spurred.
“Gee! We’re in the open now, for fair!” shouted Patsy.
“There’s the rest of the gang up there,” added Chick.
“They are getting ready to shoot,” remarked Phillips.
They could hear the distant crack of rifle shots, and they could make out the heads of the bandits as they lay behind a ridge and took as careful aim at the automobile as they could.
But Nick Carter had seen their intention, and he realized that there was one chance to dodge the rifle bullets, and only one.
He took that chance when he speeded up the machine to about fifty miles an hour.
The rough road bounced the car up in the air, and always it was even betting whether it would come down right side up or not.
“Gentle Christmas!” muttered Patsy. “This is some traveling! I believe my back teeth have been jolted up into the parting of my hair. Let her go! I can stand it if the rest can! But I’ll need new suspender buttons when we do stop.”
The bullets snored over their heads, the motor car being hidden by a bluff that ran for a considerable distance along the side of the road, just high enough to protect them.
“We’ll make it all right,” predicted Chick, gazing ahead.
“We have a long stretch where there is no protection—or very little—after we get away from this bluff,” remarked Nick Carter. “Still, I doubt if they can get our range at that distance.”
It appeared that the rascals could not get the range, for when, a few minutes afterward, the detective had run the car past the bluff and was tearing away along the path faster than was quite safe—considering that there was a precipice along one side over which an automobile might easily tip if the driver were careless for a fraction of a second or anything went wrong with the steering gear—a volley was discharged on the hill far above without one of the bullets coming anywhere near the car.
“Glory!” yelled Patsy. “There’s nothing to it! We’ve got ’em licked to a frazzle! Open her up, chief! This car for Penza and Joyalita! Watch your step! Don’t get off the car backward! Transfer at the border line without another fare! Wow! Who-o-op!”
Patsy liked to cut loose whenever there was an excuse for a demonstration, and he felt that this was one.
Nick Carter smiled at his assistant’s enthusiasm, but never took his mind off his car.
“Are they getting ready to fire again, Chick?” he asked.
“Don’t seem to be. They’re racing along on their horses, keeping up with us or trying to get ahead.”
“Oh! They have horses, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Getting in front of us?”
“Looks like it.”
“There’s no way they can ride down and stop us, is there?”
“I don’t think so,” answered Chick.
“There is no way, sir,” suddenly interposed Phillips. “Begging your pardon, your highness.”
“Gee! What is there to beg his pardon about, Phillips? You told him the truth, I reckon?”
“Yes. Of course,” replied Phillips.
“Well, the only time to beg his pardon would be when you lied to him, that’s all,” jerked out Patsy.
Nick Carter permitted himself a hasty glance up the long, rolling hill on his left. He could see, sharply outlined against the sky, the figures of six men on horseback, tearing along at full gallop, and some little distance ahead of the car.
“I should like to know what their game is,” he muttered.
Chick overheard, but he could not offer any explanation, so he held his peace.
Nick was going as fast as he dared with the car, and now, as he came to a more difficult part of the road, on account of its unevenness and the many stones strewn along, he reduced the speed materially.
“Say, chief!” called out Patsy. “We’re stopping!”
“Keep quiet!” put in Chick. “You don’t want to go over the edge, do you?”
Patsy did not reply, although, in his heart, he would have been willing to take a chance of that, rather than let the horsemen on the brow of the big hill make such good time against them.
For some time the car rolled on at a comfortable speed of twenty miles an hour, or thereabouts, and Nick Carter was taking it a little easier with the relaxing of the strain at the wheel.
Fast driving in an automobile is trying on the nervous system, as well as the muscles, and rest comes in proportion to the less number of miles per hour.
“Those fellows have gone, it seems!” remarked Patsy. “Guess they’ve given it up!”
The horsemen were, indeed, out of sight. They had not been visible for at least ten minutes.
Either a good horse or an automobile can travel a considerable distance in that period of time.
“Do you suppose they have given it up, chief?” asked Chick, in a low tone.
“I do not,” was Nick Carter’s positive reply. “I’ve met Gaspara, and I am sure he is not the man to yield until he is sure he can’t go any farther. We’ll hear from him again before we get to Paron.”
The prediction of the famous detective was verified within another five minutes.
They had reached a place where the path narrowed, so that they were much closer to the sharp edge of the abyss on their right than they had been. At the same time, bowlders at the foot of the slope on the left interfered with the car there.
Nick Carter was endeavoring to steer a safe middle course, and at the same time not reduce the speed too much, when a shout of warning and alarm from Patsy made him throttle down the power, throw in the neutral clutch, and jam his foot on the brake.
The car came to a dead stop.
Chick swung around to see what the trouble was, and instantly yelled to Nick to go on.
“Hustle for all there is in her!” roared Chick.
His manner was so wild, that Nick Carter turned involuntarily to the left and look up the mountain.
What he saw induced him to open up the engine and send the machine jumping ahead as if it had been shot out of a mortar.
“Can we make it?” cried Chick, wildly excited.
Nick Carter did not answer in words. All he did was to try for a little more speed.
On the brow of the hill—with the six men who had been riding horseback, but who now were afoot, surrounding it—was a bowlder that the detective estimated must weigh not less than four or five hundred pounds.
The bandits obviously had uprooted this enormous mass of granite from the earth, and now were balancing it on the very edge of the hill, preparatory to sending it hurtling down the slope.
It was clear now why the rascals had been riding so fast, to get ahead of the automobile. They intended to crush the machine and the men in it, without giving the victims more than the barest fighting chance.
There was no room to stop and let the quarter-ton mass bound in front of them. Yet, if they tried to get past first, they might be caught squarely in the middle!
It was a matter of close calculation, and, owing to the inequalities on the hill, as well as the many little causes that might turn the immense missile one way or the other, this calculation could not be made with any certainty.
In case of doubt, it is usually the part of wisdom to go on, instead of hanging back, and Nick Carter drove ahead.
“Gee! She’s a beaut!” exclaimed Patsy. “She looks about as big as a haystack, and a durned sight more dangerous! Straight for us, chief! That’s how she’s coming!”
Patsy was holding to the side of the car with a convulsive clutch, as he watched the gigantic stone skipping down the mountain.
It was a ticklish moment.
Nick Carter’s eyes were on the road in front. He had the wheel in a firm grasp, and the whole machinery of the car was under perfect control.
But, with all that, unless he enjoyed a little, common, everyday, bull luck, he did not believe he could get away from the insensate foe tearing toward him like a thing possessed.
“We may make it!” observed Chick. “But she’s zig-zagging in such a crazy fashion that you cannot tell what she is going to do. Can you open her up a little more?”
The motor car was tearing along faster than sixty miles an hour now. She jumped from the road so often and so hard that she was in the air most of the time. As Patsy declared, she only hit the high places, and not many of them.
Why the ponderous machine did not swerve from some of the big stones or inequalities she encountered, and go shooting over the precipice into the rock-strewn valley far below, can never be explained.
She didn’t. That is all that can be said.
Down came the great bowlder, jumping along as if it were full of life—and deviltry!
It did not come straight. If it had, the problem would not have been so difficult for Nick Carter.
It struck so many bumps and stones on its way that it gave no dependable indication of where it would land when it got to the road.
The only thing that looked likely was that it would run after the car wherever it might be, and smash it to kindling wood in sheer joy of destruction.
That was Patsy Garvan’s view of it, although he did not put it in quite those words.
“I have a hunch it’s going to get us!” he shouted. “I don’t see how it can miss! Gee! Look at that bunch on top of the hill, laughing! A lot of chumps! I suppose they think it’s a joke!”
“Speed on, Nick!” begged Chick, as the great stone flew into the air, only about fifty yards up the mountain. “She’s almost on top of us!”
Nick Carter needed no advice just now. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen the bowlder hit another one embedded in the earth, and leap away as if it had struck a hidden mine.
Then it swerved in the direction the car was running, and there seemed no possibility of avoiding it.
With a last effort, Nick Carter tried to squeeze a little more speed out of the motor. He had the throttle wide open as it was, however. He could do no more.
It was here that the little, common, everyday, bull luck came on his side.
He had reached a slight incline—just enough to give a slight forward impetus to the car, in addition to that which it got from its engine.
On came the bowlder, and it is beyond question that, if the car had been absolutely on level ground, or had encountered a little rise, there would have been a collision which could have resulted only in an awful tragedy.
The rock swept down! It was almost on top of the car! Then, as the automobile took its little extra spurt forward, the great stone skimmed the back of the machine, actually scraping the leather cover top.
With a bang on the path, it ricocheted over to the edge of the precipice, hung there a moment, and flew off into space!
The car rushed on, but the hands of Nick Carter, grasping the steering wheel, were as cold as those of a corpse.