mp-hole when its right front wheel fell into the air where the road
had ceased to be. But the hind wheels bit and climbed the grade and out.

Without pause, gathering speed down the perilous slope, Wemple came
ahead and up, gaining fifty feet of sand over the previous failure. More
of the alluvial soil of the road had dropped out at the bad place; but
he took the V in reverse, overhung the front wheel as before, and from
the top came ahead again. Four times he did this, gaining each time, but
each time knocking a bigger hole where the road fell out, until Miss
Drexel begged him not to try again.

He pointed to a squad of horsemen coming at a gallop along the road a
mile in the rear, and took the V once again in reverse.

"If only we had more stuff," Drexel groaned to his sister, as he threw
down a meager, hard-gathered armful of the dry and brittle shrub, and as
Wemple once more, with rush and roar, shot down the V.

For an instant it seemed that the great car would turn over into the
sump, but the next instant it was past. It struck the bottom of the
hollow a mighty wallop, and bounced and upended to the steep pitch of
the climb. Miss Drexel, seized by inspiration or desperation, with a
quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and,
looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers, ran along
the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving
wheels. Almost, but not quite, did the car stop, then, gathering way,
with the others running alongside and shoving, it emerged on the hard
road.

While they tossed the robes and coats and Miss Drexel's skirt into the
bottom of the car and got Mrs. Morgan on board, Davies overtook them.

"Down on the bottom!--all of you!" he shouted, as he gained the running
board and the machine sprang away. A scattering of shots came from the
rear.

"Whose business is to live!--hunch down!" Davies yelled in Wemple's ear,
accompanying the instruction with an open-handed blow on the shoulder.

"Live yourself," Wemple grumbled as he obediently hunched. "Get your
head down. You're exposing yourself."

The pursuit lasted but a little while, and died away in an occasional
distant shot.

"They've quit," Davies announced. "It never entered their stupid heads
that they could have caught us on Aliso Hill."

* * * * *

"It can't be done," was Charley Drexel's quick judgment of youth, as the
machine stopped and