want to rest on 35. Still, they did not seem to be going so very
fast, except that they overhauled and passed everything else on the
road, and not once did a car overhaul and pass them. Cliff glanced
often into the mirror, watching the road behind them for the single
speeding light of a motor cop--because Los Angeles County, as you are
probably aware, does not favor thirty-five miles an hour for
automobiles, but has fixed upon twenty-five as a safe and sane speed at
which the general public may travel.

But Cliff was wary, chance favored them with fairly clear roads, and
the miles slid swiftly behind. They ate at San Juan Capistrano not
much past the hour which Johnny had all his life thought of as supper
time. Cliff filled the gas tank, gave the motor a pint of oil and the
radiator about a quart of water, turned up a few grease cups and
applied the nose of the oil can here and there to certain bearings. He
did it all with the fastidious air of a prince democratically inclined
to look after things himself, the air which permeated his whole
personality and made Johnny continue calling him Mr. Lowell, in spite
of a life-long habit of applying nicknames even to chance acquaintances.

Cliff climbed in and settled himself. "We want to make it in time to
get some hunting at daylight," he observed in a tone which included the
fellow at the service station who was just pocketing his money for the
gas and oil. "I think we can, with luck."

Luck seemed to mean speed and more speed, The headlights bored a white
pathway through the dark, and down that pathway the car hummed at a
fifty-mile clip where the road was straight. Johnny got thrills of
which his hardy nerves had never dreamed themselves capable. Riding
the sky in the Thunder Bird was tame to the point of boredom, compared
with riding up and over and down and around a squirmy black line with
the pound of the Pacific in his ears and the steady beat of the motor
blending somehow with it, and the tingle of uncertainty as to whether
they would make the next sharp curve on two wheels as successfully as
they had made the last. Mercifully, they met no one on the hills.
There were straight level stretches just beyond reach of the tide, and
sometimes two eyes would glare at them, growing bigger and bigger.
There would be a _swoo--sh_ as a dark object shot by with mere inches
to spare, and the eyes would glare no longer. By golly, Johnny would
have a car or know the rea