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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 they surveyed the acute-angled turn on the stiff up-grade of Aliso. Beneath was the swift-running river.

“Get out everybody!” Wemple commanded. “Up-side, all of you, if you don’t want the car to turn over on you. Spread traction wherever she needs it.”

“Shoot her ahead, or back–she can’t stop,” Davies said quietly, from the outer edge of the road, where he had taken position. “The earth’s crumbling away from under the tires every second she stands still.”

“Get out from under, or she’ll be on top of you,” Wemple ordered, as he went ahead several yards.

But again, after the car rested a minute, the light, dry earth began to crack and crumble away from under the tires, rolling in a miniature avalanche down the steep declivity into the water. And not until Wemple had backed fifty yards down the narrow road did he find solid resting for the car. He came ahead on foot and examined the acute angle formed by the two zig-zags. Together with Davies he planned what was to be done.

“When you come you’ve got to come a-humping,” Davies advised. “If you stop anywhere for more than seconds, it’s good night, and the walking won’t be fine.”

“She’s full of fight, and she can do it. See that hard formation right there on the inside wall. It couldn’t have come at a better spot. If I don’t make her hind wheels climb half way up it, we’ll start walking about a second thereafter.”