Motor Matt's Century" Run"

covered. This meant that Motor Matt must average twenty-five miles an hour for the next two hours. In favorabl

from a bucket to a hogshead. The road was plainly marked, but

uled over the smallest of the boulders, and where the largest were met, and could

on could bump and jerk its way over the stones, but a low-wheel car with pneumatic ti

o dodge the rocks, leaving the trail only at points where the roc

were needed for every foot of the way. This, of c

ere the most obstacles were encountered. The avoiding of sharp stones and boulders at last became almost mechanical. With his gaze

chine, his thoughts reverted to Clipperton and his heart saddened with t

d's gang. How Clip's sensitive soul must have recoiled from confessing the truth to Matt! An

Clip to run into a relative and find him passing smoke-signals along for that prince of rascals, Dangerfield. And then, it was pretty near

necessity for doing better than that was vital to the success of his mission, and yet, without great risk to his machin

d turrets, and parapets, and a fanciful mind could easily liken them to the walls of a cas

bed. The stream was like most water-courses in Arizona, and flowed under the sand and next to the bed-rock. Here and

iminutive ponds, but in less than a minute he was as

y the waters from above and lodged in some bend of the gulch. These flats we

riding across these leve

nto the ravine. There was an adobe house on the flat, a corral, and other evidences of a rather extensive ranch. A ma

his?" called Mat

led back. "What sort of a cont

ly the backwoodsman was n

leaped along it at top speed. When near the end of the good going, the road forked,

eart gav

e Comet into the opening and giving it every ounce of powe

scaled that frightful ascent. In places the road had seemingly been blasted out of a sheer wall, and it was so narrow that

e view, however, for when he was not peering at the trail, or catching a look at the face of his watch,

ound him he could see mountain peaks pushing upward into the clear blue sky. Only the chug-chug of his laboring motor-cyc

low the top of the mountain. After a straight-away run of a hu

was a chasm, falling hundreds of feet into a gloomy gulch. Between the chasm and the wall ran t

cool, steady grip on the handlebars, or a sudden attack of

be Matt's motto. He finished the tangent and began rounding the curve. In no pl

the curve, a savage growl broke suddenly on his ears. With racing pulse

dog happened to be there, a man in a blue shirt, sombrero, and with trousers tucked in his boot-tops, emerged suddenly from b

and Motor Matt was brought suddenly

had come to a quick stop, disengaging his right foot from the toe-clip and bracing the motor-cycle

went down, with the motor-cycle on top of him, h