MOTOR STORIES

Issued Weekly. By subscription $2.50 per year. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1909, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C., by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York, N. Y.

MOTOR MATT; OR, The King of the Wheel.

By STANLEY R. MATTHEWS.

CHAPTER I.

BAD BLOOD.

"Hello, peaches!"

The girl in the calico dress turned quickly. There was a startled look in her brown eyes, and she drew back a little from the gate.

The laughing words had been flung at her breathlessly by a boy who was trotting along the road—a boy in running-togs with "P. H. S." in red letters across the breast of his white shirt. He came from the north, and the girl had been leaning upon the gate and looking south, across the bridge that spanned the canal and led into the town of Phœnix.

"I—I don't think I know you," murmured the girl, a look of repugnance crossing her brown, pretty face.

"Yes, you do," panted the boy, swinging in toward the gate and coming to a halt. "Sure you know me." Catching hold of the gate-palings he steadied himself and grinned in a manner which he must have thought engaging. "Why, you've seen me a dozen times, anyhow. Take another look."

After stealing a furtive glance at him the girl took a step backward.

"I've seen you, yes," she said quietly, "but I don't know you—and I don't think I care to know you."

"Don't jump at conclusions like that," the boy went on with a cool laugh. "You're old McReady's girl, Susie, and I'm—well, right here's where I introduce myself. I'm Dace Perry, captain of the High School cross-country team. Had the boys out for a practise run this morning, and as I'm 'way in the lead of all of them except Clipperton, I reckon I'll linger in this fair spot until they come up. Don't be so bashful, Susie; I won't bite, honest."

"I'm not afraid of your biting, Dace Perry," answered Susie with a flirt of the head. "If all I've heard of you is true, you're more given to barking than anything else."

Temper flashed an instant in the boy's sloe-black eyes, giving an ugly hint of the darker side of his character. When the anger faded an unpleasant crafty look was left on his face.

"You can't believe all you hear, and not more than half you see," he remarked. "Where's Nutmegs? I know him."

"There's no such person as 'Nutmegs,'" answered the girl tartly. "If you mean my brother, Mark, he's in his laboratory down by the canal."

Perry stared a moment, then gave vent to an amused whistle.

"Laboratory, eh? Well, that's a good one, Susie. Where's the reformed road-agent? Is he in the laboratory joint, too?"

"No, Welcome has gone into town, but I can call Mark if you——"

"No, don't call him, Susie," interrupted Perry. "I've got something to tell you about Matt King. Say, I thought that would make you open your eyes. I reckon you don't think much of Matt King, eh?"

Vivid color mantled the girl's cheeks.

"Matt is a chum of Mark's, and a good friend of mine,"[Pg 2] she answered, "and everybody says he's the best all-around athlete in the high school. Major Woolford has picked him to represent the athletic club in the bicycle races with Prescott and——"

"King has got to make good at the try-out first," scowled Perry.

"He'll do that, all right," averred Susie. "I guess there's no doubt about his being able to beat you."

"If what I've heard about him is true," continued Perry, "I reckon he won't have anything to do with the try-out, or with the race, either."

Sudden interest flashed in Susie's face. "What have you heard?" she demanded curiously.

So deeply concerned was she in this information about Matt King which Perry professed to have acquired, that she stepped eagerly to the gate.

This was what Perry had been waiting for. Susie McReady had jarred his vanity and his temper several times during their brief interview, and it was his nature to try to "play even." His idea of squaring accounts with the girl was directly in line with his low ideals and his insolent nature.

Leaning forward quickly Perry flung one arm about the girl's neck.

"I reckon you'll know me after this," cried Perry, and attempted to give the struggling girl a kiss.

Unseen by either of the two at the gate, a boy had glided noiselessly toward them on a wheel. He came from the direction of town and, as he crossed the bridge and saw Susie and Dace Perry, an inkling of the situation at the gate darted through his mind, and caused him to put more power into the pedals.

Suddenly the captain of the cross-country team was caught from behind and hurled backward with such force that he measured his length on the ground.

"Oh, Matt, Matt!" exclaimed Susie.

"What's the matter with you?" snarled Perry, quickly regaining his feet. His face was black with rage and he stepped toward Matt with doubled fists.

"I guess there's nothing much the matter with me," answered Matt coolly, "but you're a good deal of a cur, Dace Perry."

"What do you mean by butting in here like that?" fumed Perry, anything but logical now that anger had got the whip-hand of him.

"That's the way I was raised," answered Matt.

"I reckon the way you was raised gave somebody a lot of trouble," sneered Perry.

"Well, you can bet I'm going to give somebody a lot of trouble if Susie is bothered any more."

"You're swaggering around with a chip on your shoulder all the time, ain't you?"

"Not so you can notice it," laughed Matt, "but you'll always find a chip on my shoulder when a fellow acts like you were doing just now."

"Oh, punk!" Dace Perry changed his mind about wanting to fight and backed off down the road. "This isn't the end of our little ruction, Matt King. I'll give you the double-cross yet, see if I don't!"

"So-long!" answered Matt.

Perry shook his fist, looked northward along the road in the evident hope of locating some of his team, then turned disappointedly and sprinted for the bridge.

"I was never so glad of anything in my life, Matt," breathed Susie, "as to have you get here just when you did."

"I'm a little bit tickled myself, Susie," laughed Matt, picking up his wheel and standing it alongside the fence, "but I guess Perry won't trouble you any more."

"I hate him!" cried Susie, stamping her foot. "He's never been a friend of Mark's, nor of yours, either, Matt."

"I guess Mark won't lose any sleep over that, and I know I won't."

"All the same, Matt, you'd better look out for him. A coward who fights you behind your back is more to be feared than a braver enemy who faces you in the open."

"That's a cinch. But let's forget Dace Perry for a while and think of something more pleasant. Where's Chub, Susie?"

Before the girl could answer, a husky voice was wafted toward the two from along the road.

Susie and Matt looked in the direction from which this burst of melody—if such it could be called—proceeded. An old man with a wooden leg was approaching, keeping the tempo of his song with jabs of the pin that took the place of his right foot.

"Here's Welcome Perkins," said Matt, with a broad smile, leaning back against the gate-post and fixing his eyes on the old man.

"He's been to town after something for Mark," returned Susie.

Welcome Perkins, otherwise Peg-leg Perkins, otherwise the "reformed road-agent," always reminded Matt of a picture out of a comic supplement. He was little, and wizened, and old—just how old no one knew, but it was popularly supposed that he was somewhere around seventy. He had a pair of the mildest washed-out blue eyes ever set in a man's head, notwithstanding the fact that he was constantly asserting that he had passed his early life as a "pirate of the plains"; and displayed with pride an old, played-out six-shooter whose hand-grip was covered with notches—notches that made Welcome sigh and grow pensive every time he looked at them. Welcome averred that he was trying to live down his lawless past, but that his roaring, rampant, untamed disposition made the effort a struggle and a burden.

The old man wore a long and particularly vicious-looking mustache, which he was constantly training upward at the ends in order to make it even more desperate in appearance. His scanty gray locks were allowed to grow long, and they were surmounted with an old sombrero, always carefully whacked into the regulation Denver "poke." His ragged blue shirt was drawn in at the waist with a U. S. Army belt, from which depended a holster containing the notched and useless weapon already mentioned. Chaparrejos, or "chaps," which, like their owner, had seen better days—or worse and more lawless ones if Welcome's word was to be taken—covered his left lower extremity and all that was left of his right. The right leg of the chaps was cut away at the knee in order to give freer play to the wooden pin.

Silas McReady, the father and sole remaining parent of Susie and Mark, was a prospector, and constantly in the hills. Welcome was an old-time friend of Silas, and for years had been fastened upon the McReady household like a barnacle.

[Pg 3]

"Howdy, pard!" roared Welcome as he drew near the gate and reached out his hand. "It's plumb good for a ole outlaw like me to grip a honest pa'm. It helps to make me fergit what I was and to brace up an' be what I ort. I'm a horrible example o' what happens to a man when he cuts loose in his youth an' bloom an' terrorizes all outdoors—but I can't begin to tell ye how pacifyin' to my reckless natur' is the grip of a honest hand."

"Then give it a good grip, Welcome," grinned Matt. "I'd hate to have you get turbulent and go on the war-path. If a man of your age——"

Welcome, still holding Matt's hand, allowed his eyes to wander along the road to the northwest. Suddenly the weather-beaten, leathery face grew stern and the faded eyes snapped.

"Scud for the house, you two!" yelled Welcome; "scud! Trouble's a-tearin' down on us out o' the hills, an' here's whar Eagle-eye Perkins, Pirate o' the Plains, gets busy!"

The old man threw himself on Matt and pushed him through the gate. In his excitement, the strap that secured the wooden pin to Welcome's stump of a leg, broken and mended times out of mind, gave way and dropped Welcome into the yard behind Matt and Susie.

The eagle-eyed defender paid no attention to his fall, but as the gate swung shut drew himself up against the palings and jerked his obsolete weapon clear of the holster.

"Put your trust in Eagle-eye Perkins," he called valiantly to Matt and Susie; "if them red demons get at ye they walks over me to do it!"

CHAPTER II.

THE UNEXPECTED.

Welcome Perkins was as full of vagaries as a moving-picture show is full of trouble. Although he proudly referred to himself as "Eagle-eye," yet his sight was none too good, even when he had on his spectacles.

Matt and Susie, standing in the background, laughed as half a dozen puffing boys in sleeveless white shirts, running-pants and spiked shoes came abreast of the gate and straggled on toward the bridge. When the last one had flickered out of sight, Welcome muttered under his breath, sat upon the ground and began tinkering with the broken strap of his wooden leg.

"All-fired queer," said he, "how my mind's allers a-huntin' trouble that-away. 'Course if I'd a-had them spectacles on my nose I might have seen that them was runners from the high school, but I only ketched the flash o' them red letters on their white shirts, an' I jest up an' thinks o' Injuns right off. It's the ole sperrit b'ilin' around inside me, I reckon, an' I'm afeared it'll make me do somethin' yet that I'll be sorry for. I used to be a powerful man in a tussle."

Welcome pulled at the mended strap and got the wooden leg back in place; then he picked up the old weapon and Matt helped him to his feet.

"It must be awful," said Matt, with a sly look at Susie, "to have the disposition of a Royal Bengal tiger and forced to keep a muzzle on it all the time."

"Tur'ble," answered the old man with a gruesome shake of the head; "I can't begin to tell ye how tur'ble onhandy I find it oncet in a while," and with that he started off toward the back yard.

"Welcome is as jolly as a show," laughed Matt. "It's a mighty good thing that old pop-gun of his is harmless. If it wasn't for that he might make a mistake some time that would be anything but pleasant. It's a cinch he's an old false-alarm, but there's always a possibility that he'll explode by accident and do damage. Where did you say my pal Chub was?"

"In his laboratory," said Susie. "He sent Welcome to town after something, and I guess the old humbug has gone to the laboratory with it."

"What's Chub trying to invent now?" queried Matt, as he and Susie started around the house on the trail of Perkins.

"I think it's smokeless powder," replied Susie.

"Great hanky-pank!" gasped Matt. "Why, that's already been invented. Besides, Susie, Chub hadn't ought to be fooling around with stuff like that."

The back yard of the McReady home stretched down to the cottonwoods that fringed the bank of the canal. Here, in an old poultry-house, Mark, otherwise "Chub" McReady, did most of his experimenting.

A dozen feet from the "laboratory" was a tall pole rising some forty feet from the ground and overtopping the trees. At its lofty extremity was an arm with the tip of a lightning-rod swinging downward from its outer end.

"How's the wireless working, Susie?" asked Matt as they moved toward the canal.

"Mark got a spark from the Bluebell Mine last night," said Susie; "just one flash, that's all. After that something seemed to go wrong. That's generally the way with Mark's inventions, Matt. I wish he'd stop fooling away his time; but, even if his time isn't valuable, there's always the expense. Welcome encourages him, though, and furnishes most of the money. I wonder where Welcome gets it?"

"Welcome's a sly old possum in spite of his foolishness, and it's my opinion he's got a stake settled away somewhere. This wireless-telegraph experimenting is harmless enough, but I'm Dutch if I think it's the right thing for Chub to tamper with this smokeless-powder idea. Something might happen, and——"

Just then something did happen, something that was clearly not down on the program. There was a muffled roar from the laboratory, followed by a burst of smoke from the door and the open window. With a wild yell, Welcome Perkins rolled through the window, heels—or heel—over head. He was on fire in several places.

A chunky, red-haired boy came through the door as though he had been shot out of a cannon. This was Chub, and he was badly singed.

"Whoo!" yelled Chub, coming to a dazed halt and rubbing one hand across his eyes. "That was a corker, though. I guess something went crossways. Say, Perk! Hold up there, Perk!"

Welcome Perkins had scrambled erect and was stumping along for the canal like a human meteor. He was carrying his hat and seemed to think his life depended on getting where he was going in the shortest possible time.

Without waiting to explain matters to Matt and Susie, Chub darted after Welcome.

[Pg 4]

"Goodness' sakes," screamed Susie, "the laboratory is burning up!"

"Small loss if it does burn up," answered Matt, "but we'd better do what we can to put out the fire and keep sparks away from the house."

Matt ran swiftly into the kitchen of the adobe house, picked up a bucket of water and darted back toward the laboratory. There was a good deal of smoke, but not very much fire, and the single pail of water was enough to quench the flames. But the interior of the laboratory was completely wrecked.

"There'll be no conflagration, Susie," announced Matt, coming out of the place and joining the girl near the door. "Chub was a lucky boy to get out of that mess as well as he did. Let's hike for the canal and see what he and Welcome are doing."

"Mark might have killed himself," said Susie, half sobbing with the strain her nerves had undergone, "and he might have killed Welcome, too. He's got to stop this foolish experimenting. You tell him, Matt, won't you?"

"You can bet I'll do what I can, Susie," answered Matt; "I don't want Chub to blow himself up. If Welcome furnishes the money, though, I don't just see how we're going to keep Chub from furnishing the time for all this fool investigating. The thing to do is to find where Welcome keeps his grub-stake and take it away from him."

When Susie and Matt reached the canal there was a spirited dispute going on between Chub and Welcome. The latter, from his appearance, must have jumped into the canal and extinguished the flames that had fastened upon his clothes, for he was as wet as a drowned rat.

"Perk," Chub was shouting, "I told you to get alcohol, alcohol! What was it you brought back?"

"No sich of a thing!" whooped Welcome, jumping up and down in his excitement and raining water over everybody. "Sulfuric acid, that there's what ye said—an' that there's what I got."

"And there was me," snorted Chub, "trying to mix sulfuric acid with gunpowder. Say, Perk!"

"Wow! Talk to yerself, talk to anybody else, but don't ye talk to me. I've had plenty, I have. Look! Everythin' I got's sp'iled."

"Perk," counseled Chub, "you jump into the canal again and stay there."

"Jump in yerself—yah! I'm goin' out inter the hills an' hold up stages an' things jest like I useter do—an' it's you what's driv' me to it. Thar's somethin' for ye to think of when ever'body's huntin' me an' thar's a price on my head an' I ain't got no place to go. When that thar time comes, Chub McReady, jest remember it was you driv ole Welcome Perkins to his everlastin' doom!"

Then, with his head high in the air, the ex-pirate of the plains stumped off through the cottonwoods, jabbing wrathfully with his wooden pin at every step. Chub watched him a moment, then leaned against a tree and looked sheepishly at Susie and Matt.

"I guess I was too hard on Perk," remarked Chub, a slow grin working its way over his freckled face, "for I was as much to blame as he was. By rights, we both ought to jump in the canal and stay there. How's the fire?"

"Matt put it out, Chub," said Susie. "I'm going to tell dad about this when he gets back. You've got to stop this nonsense before you kill yourself or somebody else."

"All right, sis," answered Chub humbly, "I'll stop. If I could only get that wireless-telegraph line to workin' between here and the Bluebell I'd have somethin' to keep me busy. Say, Matt, if you've got time I'd like to have you tell me what's the matter with that wireless apparatus. Got a spark from the Bluebell last night, but that's all it amounted to. You're no inventor, but you're always pretty handy in telling me where I make a miscue in my machines. Go up to the house, sis," Chub added to Susie, "and keep that old fire-eater from going out into the hills and slaughtering somebody. I don't think he'd slip out at all, and I know he wouldn't massacre a horned toad, but he likes us to believe he's just naturally a bad man trying to reform, and it's just as well to keep an eye on him."

Before Susie left she cast a significant look at Matt.

"Let's go up the canal a ways, Chub," said Matt, when he and his chum were alone, "where we can make ourselves comfortable and have a little quiet confab."

"You've got more'n your hat on your mind, Matt," returned Chub, "I can tell that by the look of you; but if it's this business of mine that's put you in a funk——"

"It's not that altogether, Chub," interrupted Matt. "You see, I've got to leave Phœnix, and I want to talk with you about it."

Chub was astounded, and stood staring at Matt with jaws agape. His hair and eyebrows were singed, there was a black smudge on his face, and his clothes were more or less demoralized. In his bewilderment he made a picture that brought a hearty laugh to Matt's lips.

"Come on, Chub, what's struck you in a heap?" said Matt, catching his arm and pulling him off along the canal-bank. "You act as though I'd handed you a jolt below the belt."

"That's just the size of it, Matt," returned Chub. "Say, if you leave Phœnix you've got to take Reddy McReady along with you—or you don't go. That's flat. Are you listening to my spiel, pal?"

CHAPTER III.

DACE SHOWS HIS HAND.