Skillfully, Brian steered the coasting car to the side of the road.

  “Brian, what happened?” Honey asked nervously.

  “I don’t know,” Brian replied tensely. “I guess this is some of the temperamental behavior Mr. Burnside warned us about.” He leaned back for a moment and took a deep breath. Then he opened the door, stepped out of the car, and walked around to the hood.

  Trixie looked around to get her bearings and felt a sinking feeling in her stomach when she saw where they were. It was the worst part of Sleepyside to get stalled in: an area of warehouses and boarded-up shops. The nearest public telephone, like the nearest service station, was blocks away. And anyone they might encounter here would not be roaming the streets looking for a chance to be helpful to four stranded young people.

  Trixie started as she felt Honey’s hand, icy cold, clasp her forearm. She put her own hand over Honey’s in what she hoped was a comforting gesture. Trixie was the braver of the two girls, although Honey had changed a lot from the timid creature she’d been when she first came to Sleepyside. But right at this minute, after the scary stories they’d just been discussing, Trixie felt far from brave.

  “Can I do anything to help, Brian?” Mart asked. His simple words were, to Trixie, a bad sign. When Mart abandoned his complicated vocabulary, it usually meant he was worried.

  “Slide into the driver’s seat, and try turning the engine over when I tell you to,” Brian replied.

  Mart obeyed, and although the engine turned over forcefully, it didn’t catch.

  Mart and Brian tried four times to start the old car. The last time, the low, slow growl of the engine told them they were wearing the battery down.

  Mart turned off the engine and climbed out of the car. He went over and stood next to Brian, and the two boys talked in low murmurs that Trixie couldn’t decipher.

  After a few moments, the two boys climbed back into the car and sat down.

  “What’s happening now?” Trixie asked.

  “There’s a chance that we’ve flooded the engine. We’ll wait a few minutes, then try it one more time.”

  “And if it doesn’t start then?” Trixie persisted.

  Brian shrugged, trying to seem casual. “Then we’ll have to walk to a telephone and call for help,” he said.

  “Or we could just sit tight and wait,” Mart added. “I think the police patrol this district pretty frequently. A squad car will probably be along shortly.”

  Trixie shivered as she imagined the two equally unattractive alternatives. Walking through these deserted streets, with all their shadows, didn’t sound appealing. But neither did sitting in the car and waiting for the police—or for whoever might come before the police did!

  Mart had been fumbling in the front seat, and suddenly he gave a triumphant shout. “I found a flashlight!” he exclaimed.

  “Good for you!” Brian said. “I should have thought to look for one. Let’s have another look under the hood. If you’ll hold the light for me, I might be able to see something that I didn’t see before.”

  The two boys once again climbed out of the car and peered under the hood.

  Trixie looked up at the sky. The early summer days were long, but now stars were beginning to appear in the rapidly descending darkness. “We could make a wish,” she said, trying to sound jovial.

  Honey’s voice was barely a whisper in the stillness: “I already did.”

  “Trixie,” Brian called, “we need some help.”

  “What is it?” Trixie asked.

  “It helps a lot to have Mart holding this light for me. So I want you to get behind the wheel and turn the key and step on the starter. Maybe I’ll be able to see what the trouble is this time,” Brian said.

  “Me?” Trixie squawked. “I’ve never driven a car in my life!”

  “I’m not asking you to drive the car! I just want you to turn something and step on something! You’ve done that before, haven’t you?” Brian snapped.

  Trixie bit her lower lip as tears sprang into her eyes. She knew that Brian’s anger wasn’t really at her but at the car and at the dark and at his own sense of helplessness. Still, she was nervous enough, without having someone yelling at her.

  Reluctantly, she climbed into the front seat of the car. In her anxiety, it seemed like ages before she even found the key, but she refused to ask for help from her equally anxious older brother. Finally her hand touched the cold metal, and her foot found the starter button on the floor. “I’m ready when you are,” she called.

  “Now!” Brian called.

  Trixie turned the key and stepped on the starter. The engine turned over, but even slower than the time before. It sputtered and almost caught; then it died again.

  “I think I’ve spotted the problem,” Brian called jubilantly. “Just hold on a second and try it again when I give the word.”

  Trixie waited, straining forward, every muscle of her body tensed. She felt as if she were lending all of her energy to Brian, to aid him in getting the car started.

  Trixie jerked around when she heard a stifled scream from the backseat, then screamed herself as she saw a man in baggy clothes standing, silent, next to the car.

  It was the hitchhiker!

  Hit and Run! ● 3

  FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE A YEAR, Trixie stared up into the hitchhiker’s face. There was a growth of stubble on his chin and upper lip. His face was so thin that the cheeks seemed to have collapsed beneath the cheekbones. Above his long, pinched-looking nose, his thick, dark eyebrows were drawn together in a menacing frown.

  Suddenly the eyebrows relaxed, and the thin lips drew back in a smile, revealing crooked teeth. “Sorry. I must have scared the daylights out of you, coming up behind you in the dark,” he said in a soft, gentle voice.

  Trixie let out her pent-up breath, then slowly drew it in again. She felt the beating of her heart begin to slow down. “It was sort of a jolt,” she admitted.

  “I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you, you understand,” the hitchhiker began.

  “Oh, no, I’m sure you weren’t,” Trixie said quickly, happy to be able to agree with this man who, she was sure, was totally disagreeable.

  “It’s just that all of our attention was on the front of the car,” Honey added tactfully. “You could have galloped up behind us on horseback and we probably wouldn’t have noticed you.”

  The man nodded and turned his own attention to the front of the car. “Are you having troubles with this old machine?” he asked.

  The screams had drawn the boys from under the hood of the Model A. Brian answered the stranger’s question with a nod. “We just picked up this car from a friend. It’s sort of on loan for a few days. He mentioned that it was a bit temperamental sometimes, and we’ve found out he was telling us the truth. We hadn’t gone more than a couple of miles when it conked out.”

  “It seemed as though the car was just about to start when... when you....” Trixie didn’t know how to complete the sentence without sounding as if she was accusing the stranger.

  “I’m not sure about that,” Brian said. “I mean, I got the engine to sputter a little bit, but I’m not sure it was really about to catch. We’ve worn down the battery so much that I’m afraid to just keep fiddling with the carburetor until something works.”

  The hitchhiker’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “The carburetor, you say?” he asked excitedly. “Let’s take a look.” He walked around to the front of the car and stuck his head under the hood. “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked.

  “Right here,” Mart said, turning on the beam and focusing it on the carburetor.

  “Mm-hmm,” said the stranger. “Just as I thought. Do you have a screwdriver?”

  “Well.... There might be a toolbox in the car somewhere—” Brian began.

  “Never mind,” the man snapped. “Do you have a dime?”

  The four Bob-Whites all dug into their pockets at once. “Here,” Trixie said, coming up with a thin, silver-colored disk and handing it to Brian, who passed it to the hitchhiker.

  There was a moment of silence. Then the stranger said, “Uh-huh. Try it now.”

  Brian looked expectantly at Trixie, but she slid over into the passenger’s seat. “This is no time for amateurs,” she told her brother.

  Brian grinned at Trixie’s unexpected caution and climbed in behind the wheel. He turned the key and stepped on the starter. The engine turned and caught immediately, settling into a smooth, purring idle. “It’s a miracle!” he exclaimed.

  The hitchhiker straightened, rubbing his greasy hands absentmindedly on his pants legs. “It’s hardly that,” he said. “In fact, it’s the simplest thing in the world to someone who’s seen a Model A carburetor before. Come here. I’ll show you how it works.”

  Brian got back out of the car and watched and listened as the stranger explained what he had just done.

  Trixie scrambled into the backseat again. “Are you as relieved as I am, Honey?” she asked.

  The other girl nodded. “In fact, I bet I’m more relieved than you are, because I bet I was more scared than you were when the car wouldn’t start.”

  “Well, you made up for that by scaring me with your scream when you saw the hitchhiker standing next to the car,” Trixie told her.

  “I’m sorry I scared you, but you must admit that he does look sort of... well, disreputable,” Honey said, lowering her voice to a whisper to avoid being overheard.

  Trixie shook her head. “No. I mean, yes, he does look a little raggedy, but I don’t think that’s why you were afraid of him. I think we scared ourselves with all those horror stories we were telling right after we first saw him.” She held up her hand to stop the protest that she knew Honey was about to make. “I haven’t forgotten what was said. I agree with you that both hitchhiking and picking up hitchhikers are dangerous. But, Honey, the point of remembering those stories is to make us cautious, not scared of our own shadows.”

  Honey wrinkled her nose. “That’s true, too. I’ve heard equally terrible stories of people who have attacked—even killed—harmless strangers because they’d talked themselves into being afraid of them.“

  “What if we’d hit this guy over the head because we were so sure he was going to hurt us? We’d still be sitting here in a conked-out car, that’s what!” Trixie bobbed her head for emphasis as she answered her own question.

  “I guess we owe that man an apology,” Honey said softly.

  “I guess we owe you an apology,” Brian said loudly, then turned from the hitchhiker to the girls, who had burst into laughter at his words.

  “Oh, Brian,” Trixie gasped, “you’re always teasing Honey and me about being on the same wavelength, but I guess it’s really all of us. We were just saying the same thing!”

  “That’s right,” Honey said. “I’m sorry I screamed when I saw you standing by the car.”

  “Me, too,” Trixie added.

  “It’s perfectly understandable,” the stranger said. “It’s dark, and this isn’t the safest part of town, I guess.” He rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin. “I guess I’m not the best-looking man in these parts, either. It was my own fault, too, for not saying anything as I walked up. I don’t always think about other people’s feelings. In this case, I was more interested in the car than the people in it.”

  “You mean you were wishing we’d given you a ride when we passed you back there,” Trixie guessed. “We probably should have, but our parents have told us never to pick up hitchhikers.”

  The man waved his arm in a gesture of dismissal. “That wasn’t what I meant at all. Your parents are absolutely right. You shouldn’t give rides to strangers. In fact, if you’ll take my advice, you won’t get involved with anybody anytime in any way, if you can help it.” The man’s tone had turned suddenly bitter as he spoke.

  “You don’t take your own advice, then,” Trixie blurted. “I mean, you just got involved with us when you saw we needed help.”

  The man snorted indignantly. “You’re not a very good listener, are you, young lady? I just said it wasn’t the people in the car I was interested in. It was the car itself.”

  Trixie felt herself blushing at his rude rebuke.

  “Are cars a hobby of yours?” Brian asked courteously, willing to give the stranger a second chance to be more polite.

  “Cars are my hobby, my passion, and, from time to time, my livelihood, young man,” the man said.

  “Then it must seem strange to be hitchhiking instead of driving,” Trixie said.

  “I wasn’t hitchhiking!” the stranger exclaimed, almost shouting. “You apparently feel so guilty about not giving me a ride that you assume I was asking for one. Well, I wasn’t!”

  “But you turned to look back at us as we approached, and you stared after us as we went by,” Brian pointed out logically.

  The stranger snorted again. “If you’re going to be driving around town in a Model A for the next few days, as you say you are, then you’d better get used to being stared at. There aren’t too many cars on the street today that look like it—or sound like it, for that matter. When I heard that car coming up behind me, I thought I must be dreaming.”

  “You mean you could tell it was a Model A just from the sound of it?” Trixie asked in amazement.

  “Model A or Model T. I couldn’t be quite sure. Model A was my first guess, though. There’s a slight difference between the two,” the stranger said.

  “Well, I’m just glad someone came along who knew about the car,” Brian said. “We were getting pretty worried.”

  “I really feel that we should do something to pay back your kindness,” Honey said.

  “I don’t need money,” the stranger snapped.

  It was Honey’s turn to blush, but it took more than a snappish stranger to destroy her tact. “Actually, we don’t have much money with us, anyway. I mean that we should do something—give you a ride, or—”

  “Aha! Didn’t you just say your parents had told you not to go around picking up strangers? Well, listen to them. They know best. And listen to me when I say you shouldn’t get involved with anybody if you can help it. That’s better advice than what I told you about that old carburetor,” the stranger said with a nod to Brian.

  Even in the dark, Trixie could see Brian tense. Her oldest brother had a calm, logical mind and a slow temper. But he also had a deep sense of independence and a dislike for being told what to do— especially by strangers. “We’ll take our parents’ advice about giving rides, but I’m afraid we’ll have to reject yours. We happen to believe that getting involved with other people is what life is all about,” Brian said firmly.

  The stranger stared at the boy for a moment. Then, surprisingly, he started to laugh. “You’re strong-willed, I see. I admire that. I won’t try to change your mind about people. Maybe life will do that for you, as it did for me. If you still want to do something to pay me back—although, as I said, I did what I did because I like cars, not people—you can tell me how close I am to Glenwood Avenue. Then I’ll be on my way—on foot.”

  Brian relaxed and smiled as the stranger withdrew his unwanted advice. He turned and pointed toward Glenwood and told the stranger the best route for getting there.

  The stranger nodded, stuck his hands in his pockets, and started down the street, head lowered, as if he had already forgotten about the Bob-Whites and their Model A and was lost in his own thoughts.

  Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Trixie saw the lights of a car. They were moving down the street toward her, and they were coming much too fast. As Trixie turned her eyes away from the blinding lights, she saw, to her horror, that the stranger was walking slowly across the street, directly in their path!

  “Hey!” Brian shouted. “Look out!”

  But it was too late. The large green van behind the lights sped down on the stranger. A sickening thud told Trixie the van had hit him. She watched in disbelief as the van sped away, not even slowing down. Then slowly, unwillingly, she turned her attention back to the street and the crumpled, motionless form that now lay at the edge of it.

  Brian was already racing toward the stranger, and Mart was right behind him. Trixie fumbled for the door latch and finally found it, then stumbled out of the car. Honey scrambled out behind her.

  “Is he all right?” Trixie shrieked.

  Brian, crouched beside the stranger, looked up at his sister, his face shining white in the darkness. “He’s still alive. But a jolt like that has to do some damage. How much, I can’t tell.”

  “What are we going to do?” Honey asked in a strangled voice.

  “We need an ambulance, and we need to keep him warm,” Brian said.

  “I’ll find a phone,” Mart said as he hurriedly slipped out of his Bob-White jacket and handed it to Brian. Without another word, he was gone, running off down the street.

  “It could take ages for Mart to find a phone,” Trixie said. “Couldn’t we put him in the car and—“

  “No!” Brian barked as he took off his own jacket and covered the stranger. “You should know that by now, Trixie. The one thing not to do with an accident victim is to move him.”

  Trixie bit her lip. She did know it, but the panic of the moment had driven it from her mind. Once again, she was grateful for Brian’s calm reaction to a crisis.

  “It’s so awful just to sit here with him,” Honey said, her voice revealing how close she was to tears.

  “I know that,” Brian said. “I feel pretty helpless, too. That’s why I snapped at you, Trixie. I’m sorry.“

  “I deserved it, Brian,” Trixie told him. “I guess this man was right when he said I’m not a very good listener. But maybe, if people keep telling me the same thing over and over often enough, harshly enough, I’ll finally get it through my skull.”

  “Oh, Trixie, you do listen!” Honey hastened to defend her friend. “Sometimes it takes a while for you to think things out—and the rest of us don’t seem to be very good at that. Mr. Lytell would never have gotten his money back that time if you hadn’t listened. This man was wrong.”

 

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