“Gee!” Larry exclaimed, “if he hits that scrap heap going like that――” He got no farther, for at that precise instant the oncoming machine did hit the scrap heap. As the two trampers sprang aside to give a clear road, there was a ripping crash, a shrill scream from somebody in the auto, and car and wooden bridge disappeared in a cloud of dust. “Great Moses!” gasped little Purdick, “I’ll bet the last one of them’s killed!” “Come on!” Larry shouted, and they broke all track records in a flying sprint to the scene of the disaster. It was a pretty bad smash. The car was a heavy touring machine. It had turned part way over on its side in the fall and was tangled hopelessly in the bridge timbers and planking. Its occupants――there were three of them, a woman, a girl and a man――were caught under the crushed top, and when Larry and Purdick ran up, the girl was crying and trying to lift the woman, who seemed to be either dead or in a dead faint. The man, bronzed, middle-aged, and looking as if he might be a retired cattle king, was pinned between the bent steering-wheel and the back of the driving seat, but he did not seem to be badly injured. “If you two can take a plank and pry me loose,” he said quite calmly, as Larry and Purdick jumped down into the chaos and fell frantically at work. In a jiffy the thing was done, and then the three of them tore the broken top away and got the woman and the girl out. With every chance for a fatal accident, or at least a sad array of broken bones, it proved that no one of the three was seriously hurt. The woman, a stoutly built lady with the prettiest silvering hair Larry had ever seen――so he was saying to himself――came to as they lifted her to the level of the roadway, and a torn dress seemed to be the worst of her injuries. The girl had a cut in one round arm made by a piece of flying glass when the wind-shield broke, but she tied her handkerchief around it and after that was done, paid no more attention to it than a boy would. When they all reached a point at which they could draw a long breath and begin to straighten things out, Larry looked hard at the sunburned gentleman and said: “Aren’t you Dick Maxwell’s Uncle Billy Starbuck, from Brewster, Colorado?” “You’ve guessed it the first time,” said the cattle-kingish gentleman with a grim little smile. “And you’re young Donovan, aren’t you?――the fellow who was with Dick last summer up in the Tourmaline?” “Yes; I’m Larry, and this is Charles Purdick, my room-mate,” said Larry, introducing his fellow rescuer. “We’d been out for a little hike and were going back when we saw you coming.” “How far are we from town?” asked “Uncle Billy.” “Only about half a mile; it’s just over the top of that hill,” Larry answered. “If you’ll stay here with the ladies, we’ll run back and find an auto for you. You were going to stop at Sheddon anyway, weren’t you?”