“Aw, take a wheel off their tin wagon!” a laughter-hoarse voice bettered the plan.

“Hold ’em up and take a nickel off ’em—­if they carry that much on their persons after dark,” another suggested.

“You’re on, bo!  This is a hold-up.  Hist!”

A hold-up they proceeded to make it.  They halted the little car with a series of explosions as it passed.  The driver was alone, and as he climbed out to inspect his tires, he confronted what looked to his startled eyes like a dozen masked men.  Solemnly they went through his pockets while he stood with his hands high above him.  They took his half-plug of chewing tobacco and a ten-cent stick-pin from his tie, and afterwards made him crank his car and climb back into the seat and go on.  He went—­with the throttle wide open and the little car loping down the boulevard like a scared pup.

“Watch him went!” shrieked one they called Hen, doubling himself together in a spasm of laughter.

“’He was—­here—­when we started, b-but he was—­gone—­when we got th’ough!’” chanted another, crudely imitating a favorite black-faced comedian.

Jack, one arm thrown across the wheel, leaned out and looked back, grinning under the red band stretched across the middle of his face.  “Ah, pile in!” he cried, squeezing his gum between his teeth and starting the engine.  “He might come back with a cop.”

That tickled them more than ever.  They could hardly get back into the car for laughing.  “S-o-m-e little bandits!—­what?” they asked one another over and over again.

“S-o-m-e little bandits is—­right!” the approving answer came promptly.

“S-o-m-e time, bo, s-o-m-e time!” a drink-solemn voice croaked in a corner of the big seat.

Thus did the party of Christian Endeavorers return sedately from their trip to Mount Wilson.

CHAPTER TWO

“THANKS FOR THE CAR”

They held up another car with two men in it, and robbed them of insignificant trifles in what they believed to be a most ludicrous manner.  Afterward they enjoyed prolonged spasms of mirth, their cachinnations carrying far out over the flat lands disturbing inoffensive truck gardeners in their sleep.  They cried “S-o-m-e time!” so often that the phrase struck even their fuddled brains as being silly.

They met another car—­a large car with three women in the tonneau.  These, evidently, were home-going theatre patrons who had indulged themselves in a supper afterwards.  They were talking quietly as they came unsuspectingly up to the big, shiny machine that was traveling slowly townward, and they gave it no more than a glance as they passed.

Then came the explosion, that sounded surprisingly like a blowout.  The driver stopped and got out to look for trouble, his companion at his heels.  They confronted six masked men, three of them displaying six-shooters.