"Yes, it's too fast," Johnnie screamed back to him. "I'm trying to go
slower, but the foot-brake won't hold. Uncle Pros, is he hurt? Is he
hurt bad?"
"I don't think so, honey," roared the old man stoutly, guarding Gray's
inert body with his arm. Then, stretching up as he kneeled, and leaning
forward as close to her ear as he could get: "But you git him to
Cottonville quick as you can. Don't you werry about goin' slow, unlessen
you're scared yourself. Thar ain't no tellin' who might pop up from
behind these here bushes and take a chance shot at us as we go by."
Johnnie worked over her machine wildly. Gray had told her of the
foot-brake only; but her hand encountering the lever of the emergency
brake, she grasped it at a hazard and shoved it forward, as the god of
luck had ordered, just short of a zigzag in the steep mountain road
which, at the speed they had been making, would have piled them, a mass
of wreckage, beneath the cliff.
The sudden, violent check--shooting along at the speed they were, it
amounted almost to a stoppage--gave the girl a sense of power. If she
could do that, they were fairly safe. With the relief, her brain
cleared; she was able to study the machine with some calmness. Gray
could not help her--out of the side of her eye she could see where he
lay inert and senseless in Passmore's hold.
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