Very precisely he did so, and accepted enough from Foster to make up
the amount to twenty-five dollars. He was tempted to take more. For
one minute he even contemplated holding the two up and taking enough to
salve his hurt pride and his endangered reputation. But he did not do
anything of the sort, of course; let's believe he was too honest to do
it even in revenge for the scurvy trick they had played him.
He ate a generous lunch of sandwiches and dill pickles and a wedge of
tasteless cocoanut cake, and drank half a pint or so of the hot, black
coffee, and felt more cheerful.
"Want to get down and stretch your legs? I've got to take a look at the
tires, anyway. Thought she was riding like one was kinda flat, the last
few miles."
They climbed out stiffly into the rain, stood around the car and stared
at it and at Bud testing his tires, and walked off down the road for a
little distance where they stood talking earnestly together. From the
corner of his eye Bud caught Mert tilting his head that way, and smiled
to himself. Of course they were talking about him! Any fool would know
that much. Also they were discussing the best means of getting rid of
him, or of saddling upon him the crime of stealing the car, or some
other angle at which he touched their problem.
Under cover of testing the rear wheel farthest from them, he peeked into
the tonneau and took a good look at the small traveling bag they had
kept on the seat between them all the way. He wished he dared--But they
were coming back, as if they would not trust him too long alone with
that bag. He bent again to the tire, and when they climbed back into
the curtained car he was getting the pump tubing out to pump up that
particular tire a few pounds.
They did not pay much attention to him. They seemed preoccupied and not
too friendly with each other, Bud thought. Their general air of gloom
he could of course lay to the weather and the fact that they had been
traveling for about fourteen hours without any rest; but there was
something more than that in the atmosphere. He thought they had
disagreed, and that he was the subject of their disagreement.
He screwed down the valve cap, coiled the pump tube and stowed it away
in the tool box, opened the gas tank, and looked in--and right there he
did something else; something that would have spelled disaster if either
of them had seen him do it. He spilled a handful of little round white
objects like marbles into the tank before he screwed on the cap, and
from his pocket he pulled a little paper box, crushed it in his hand,
and threw it as far as he could into the bushes. Then, whistling just
above his breath, which was a habit with Bud when his work was going
along pleasantly, he scraped the mud off his feet, climbed in, and drove
on down the road.