Woody waited until Worm had driven out to the mile mark in the Dodge and waved his flag to show he was ready. Then he took off again. This time he decided that he'd wind Cindy Lou up real tight in low as fast as he could, and jam her into high with his foot all the way down on the accelerator. The hot rod fled down the salt flat with a defiant snarling roar. For the split second when she was in neutral between gear shifts, it seemed to Woody she would shake herself to pieces. Then he flipped her into high and again experienced that clean lancing forward as the gear took hold. With the accelerator all the way down it seemed as if Worm and the ground he stood upon were being flung toward him. Then, from the engine by his side, came a strange and ominous sound. It started as nothing more than a heavy knocking but in seconds was as if forty blacksmiths were beating on a boiler with sledge hammers. Cindy Lou slowed down so fast that it seemed as if her brakes had seized. Woody slipped her into neutral and turned off the ignition. The clanging and hammering stopped immediately. Worm came loping up. "What happened, laddie?" he asked. "I don't know," Woody said. "She just blew up." "Turn her over," said Worm. Woody pressed the starter, and the grinding and banging started immediately. Worm got down and looked under Cindy Lou. "Connecting rod," he said. "A piece of it has come clear through the pan. Yere oil's leaking oot. Worse than that. It must have broken through the cylinder wall. There's water wi' the oil." He looked at Woody and decided not to say anything more. There was nothing more that could be said. Cindy Lou was a wreck. She'd need a completely new engine if she was ever to run again. They towed her home in silence. 3 Woody was so depressed after Cindy Lou threw a connecting rod during the trial runs at the salt lakes that neither Worm nor Steve could do or say anything to cheer him up. It is possible that Mary Jane might have been able to remove his depression, for part of it at least stemmed from the quarrel between them. But if Mary Jane knew anything of Woody's troubles, she left him severely alone. Woody heard through Steve that she was going around with Bob Peters, and he wondered at times whether he ought not to go around to Bob Peters and punch him on the nose. "I'd sure feel a lot better," he told Steve, "if I punched him right in the snoot." Steve was somewhat undersized, a freckled, sandy-haired youth who was growing a mustache distinguishable only because it made him look as though there was something wrong with his upper lip. "You might feel better right when you punched him," Steve said. "But one second later you might not feel so good. That Peters is a pretty big guy." "Just a sack of hog fat," said Woody savagely. "Coming right here with my girl so she could see me handing over the ten bucks to him that I was supposed to take her out with."