bullet. Once, only, the car was struck.

"Here!--what are you up to!" Wemple demanded suddenly of Drexel, who had
exposed himself to fish a rifle out of the car.

"Going to show the skunks what shooting is," was his answer.

"No, you don't," Wemple said. "We're not here to fight, but to get
this party to Tampico." He remembered Peter Tonsburg's remark. "Whose
business is to live, Charley--that's our business. Anybody can get
killed. It's too easy these days."

Still under fire, they moored at the north shore, and when Davies had
tossed overboard the igniter from the ferry engine and commandeered ten
gallons of its surplus gasoline, they took the steep, soft road up the
bank in a rush.

"Look at her climb," Drexel uttered gleefully. "That Aliso hill won't
bother us at all. She'll put a crimp in it, that's what she'll do."

"It isn't the hill, it's the sharp turn of the zig-zag that's liable to
put a crimp in her," Davies answered. "That road was never laid out for
autos, and no auto has ever been over it. They steamboated this one up."

But trouble came before Aliso was reached. Where the road dipped
abruptly into a small jag of hollow that was almost V-shaped, it arose
out and became a hundred yards of deep sand. In order to have speed left
for the sand after he cleared the stiff up-grade of the V, Drexel was
compelled to hit the trough of the V with speed. Wemple clutched Miss
Drexel as she was on the verge of being bounced out. Mrs. Morgan, too