The country had changed greatly from that around Hillsgrove. It looked wilder, more unsettled. Instead of fields of ripening grain, orchards, or acres of truck-gardens, the road was bordered by long stretches of woods and tangled undergrowth. The farm-houses were farther apart and less pretentious. There was even a faint tang of salt in the air. At length, from the summit of an elevation, Mr. Curtis pointed out a distant hill showing hazily blue on the horizon.
[Illustration: The car crashed into the weather-worn railing of the bridge]
"That's Lost Mine Hill, fellows!" he said. "From there, it's not more than three miles to our stopping-place."
Eagerly they stared and speculated as the truck clattered down the incline, its horn sounding raucously. At the bottom there was a straight level stretch of a thousand feet or so, with a bridge midway along it. It was sandy here in the hollow, and the truck had made little more than half the distance to the bridge when all at once, with a weird wailing of the siren, a great gray car shot into sight around a curve beyond.
It was going very fast. Dale and Court, hanging over the side of the truck together, had barely time to note the trim chauffeur behind the wheel and a man and woman in the luxurious tonneau when the explosion of a blow-out, sharp as a pistol-shot, smote on their startled senses. The car leaped, quivered, skidded in the loose sand, crashed into the weather-worn railing of the bridge, hung suspended for an instant above the stream, and then toppled over and out of sight. There was a tremendous splash, a great spurt of flying water, and then--silence!
Dale never knew just how he got out of the truck. Gripped by the horror and suddenness of the accident, his mind was a blank until he found himself running over the bridge amid a throng of other hurrying scouts. A moment later he was pressed close to the unbroken portion of the railing, and, staring down, caught a glimpse of the gray car upturned in the sluggish waters of the stream.
The car had turned turtle, and the great wheels, still spinning slowly, showed above the surface almost to their hubs. The water was roiled and muddy; bubbles and a little steam rose about the forward part of the car. Ten feet away floated a chauffeur's cap. Nearer at hand, a light lap-robe, billowed by the air caught underneath, seemed for an instant to be the clothing of one of the passengers. But Dale swiftly understood its real nature, and with a choke he realized that the people were pinned beneath the car. All this came to him in a flash; then, as Mr. Curtis and the foremost of the scouts plunged down into the wide, but shallow, stream, he turned suddenly about and raced back to the truck.