monkeyed with them swell house parties before, and generally
I've dug up trouble at 'em; but for the sake of Pinckney's health I
said I'd take another chance; so in I climbs, and we goes zippin' off
through the mud. Sadie hadn't told me more'n half the cat-scraps the
women had pulled off durin' them rainy days before we was 'most there.

Just as we slowed up to turn into the private road that leads up to
Breeze Acres, one of them dinky little one-lunger benzine buggies comes
along, missin' forty explosions to the minute and coughin' itself to
death on a grade you could hardly see. All of a sudden somethin' goes
off. Bang! and the feller that was jugglin' the steerin' bar throws up
both hands like he'd been shot with a ripe tomato.

"Caramba!" says he. "Likewise gadzooks!" as the antique quits movin'
altogether.

I'd have known that lemon-coloured pair of lip whiskers anywhere.
Leonidas Dodge has the only ones in captivity. I steps out of the
show-case in time to see mister man lift off the front lid and shove
his head into the works.

"Is the post mortem on?" says I.

"By the beard of the prophet!" says he, swingin' around, "Shorty
McCabe!"

"Much obliged to meet you," says I, givin' him the grip. "The
Electro-Polisho business must be boomin'," says I, "when you carry it
around in a gasoline coach. But go on with your autopsy. Is it
locomotor ataxia that ails the thing, or cirrhosis of the sparkin'
plug?"

"It's nearer senile dementia," says he. "Gaze on that piece of
mechanism, Shorty. There isn't another like it in the country."

"I can believe that," says I.

For an auto it was the punkiest ever. No two of the wheels was mates
or the same size; the tires was bandaged like so many sore throats; the
front dasher was wabbly; one of the side lamps was a tin stable
lantern; and the seat was held on by a couple of cleats knocked off the
end of a packing box.

"Looks like it had seen some first-aid repairin'," says I.

"Some!" says Leonidas. "Why, I've nailed this relic together at least
twice a week for the last two months. I've used waggon bolts, nuts
borrowed from wayside pumps, pieces of telephone wire, and horseshoe
nails. Once I ran twenty miles with the sprocket chain tied up with
twine. And yet they say that the age of miracles has passed! It would
need a whole machine shop to get her going again," says he. "I'll
await until my waggons come up, and then we'll get out the tow rope."