It was one of
those windy, early-fall days. As Gus Wilson and his helper, Stan
Hicks, drove out into the country-side. Gus gratefully inhaled gusts
of tangy autumn air.
"On this
call," he told Stan, "we'll kill two birds with one stone. You drop me
off at Ezra Hendricks' place, and then go up to the Big Hill and pick up
that motor for repair. That'll take you a couple of hours. I'll
be ready to go by the time you get back."
"Fine!" Stan
exclaimed. "This is one trip I'll enjoy."
A few
minutes previously, Mrs. Ezra Hendricks had driven into the Model Garage to
tell Gus that her husband was hauling corn in to fill his silo, and that
their truck was stalled. Ezra had been trying to phone Gus, she said,
but the rural telephone was out of order.
"What seemed
to be the trouble with the truck?" Gus had asked.
"I don't
know," Mrs. Hendricks had told him, "but Ezra told me that Pete Blinstock
was raising so much dust that he couldn't even see the truck."
Idle Hands
Cost Money
Driving into
Ezra's yard, Gus waved to Will Shepard and Steve Overhart, working with a
small tractor and a silage cutter on a fast-disappearing pile of corn.
"No wonder
Ezra is frothing at the mouth," Gus told Stan. "Shepard and Overhart
charge by the hour. If Ezra doesn't keep the corn coming to them, it
will cost him while they stand idle."
The stalled
truck, half loaded with corn shocks, stood at the edge of a field near the
house. Beside it stood Tom Hanratty, another close neighbor of Ezra's
pitchfork in hand. Ezra himself was leaning over the line fence, his
gray beard trembling with indignation as he shook his fist at Pete Blinstock.
Blinstock was preparing his field for the planting of winter wheat, just
across the fence line, pulling a four-section drag with a crawler tractor.
A curtain of dust rose behind him.
"Quit it,
you lump jawed old gopher," Ezra yelled at Blinstock as Gus pulled up, swung
out his tool kit and sent Stan on to Big Hill to pick up the motor.
The insults
that passed between the two old gents might have fooled a stranger.
But Gus knew they were warm friends who enjoyed needling each other
unmercifully. Blinstock would not stop throwing dust as long as he got
a rise out of Ezra.
"Some day,"
Ezra declared, coming over to the truck, "I'll grab Blinstock's nose and
twist his head until he looks over his back."
"That," Tom
Hanratty chuckled, "I would like to see."
Gus climbed
into the truck, turned on the switch, pumped the throttle vigorously and
stepped on the starter. The motor came to life, ran smoothly and then
began to lose power with a hollow sound. Gus guessed that it had gas
trouble, but he leaped out of the truck again to run a neon-tubed
screwdriver over the spark plugs before the motor could die completely.
Air
Cleaner Is Missing
Brilliant
flashes in the screwdriver handle told him that there was little chance of
ignition trouble. Carburetor or pump, he decided, unless Ezra was out
of gas.
Even as this
occurred to Gus, he noticed that the air cleaner was missing from the top of
the carburetor. Gus frowned. It would be just like Ezra to throw
the cleaner away in a fit of anger.
Gus peered
into the throat of the carburetor, flashing his pencil light, working the
throttle rapidly. He saw a tiny, thin jet of gas squirt from the
injector nozzle. The stream angled off to the side, as though passing
through a partly blocked nozzle. That carburetor had more dirt and
sand and corn-husk shred in it than gas, Gus thought. He'd have to
take it down and clean it out.
At that
moment Will Shepard came tearing through the cornfield on a dead run, his
features twisted with panic.
"Quick!" he
yelled,.
"Steve got
slammed by the tractor belt. He's out cold."
Gus felt a
moment of stunned horror, and then he was running towards the house at top
speed.
Arriving on
the scene, he found Steve Overhart unconscious on the ground. Shepard
was dashing cold water in his face with no effect. There was no
telling how badly he was injured - likely, Gus figured, concussion.
"Quick,
Ezra!" he gasped. "Get out your car."
"My car!"
Ezra echoed. "Ma still has it in town."
"Get any
car!" Gus snapped. "Hanratty - Shepard - your cars?"
"We rode the
tractor over," Shepard choked out. "There is no car."
Gus's mind
chewed on the problem.
Telephone out and no car
on the premises. Blinstock's old car was seldom used, often had a dead
battery or flat tire or both. Steve lay back now, in a state of shock.
The man might die if he didn't get medical care quickly.
"Stay with
him, Hanratty," Gus said, and ran toward the truck.
Gus jumped
into the cab, pumped the throttle, stepped on the starter. The motor
came to life as before, then died.
"That's the
way she's been acting," Ezra chattered, coming up. "What are we going
to do, Gus?"
Gus said
nothing. He swung down, scooped up a fistful of tools. He'd have
to jerk the carburetor and tear it apart for cleaning.
So Little
Time - So Much to Do
His mind ran
over the necessary steps; throttle rod to unhook, choke wire, gas line,
vacuum line, two 5/16 nuts on two studs, lift the carburetor.
Disconnect linkage between throttle and accelerating pump arm, remove
machine screws between throat casting and bowl casting.
Pull the two apart,
remove and clean jets, clear float needle and don't drop it.
Gus reached
out with a pair of side cutters to pull the cotter pin off the throttle rod.
A gust of wind whipped dust from Blinstock's field, and for a moment Gus was
blinded.
He backed
out from the hood, straightened up. The swirling dust had stirred an
old memory, of a little man who had once driven into his pumps broke and
discouraged, heading east to look for work. He had come from where the
dust blew much worse than this, where men fled before it for their very
lives. Gus had given that man a tank of gas, because he needed it, and
the man had told Gus something about fighting dust.
Thoughtfully
Gus moved under the hood again. Swiftly he stripped number three and
four wires from the spark plugs, reversed them. He jumped into the
truck cab, pumped the throttle to gain that tiny jet of injector gas,
stepped on the starter. The motor roared raggedly, backfired.
Gus leaped out replaced the two wires on their proper plugs, climbed back
into the cab, and the truck began to roll toward the house. Gus pulled
up beside the injured man, leaped to the load of corn, kicking it around to
form a bed. "Lift Steve up to me," he said, "Easy does it." They
lifted the injured man, laid him gently down.
"Stay with
him, Hanratty," Gus said.
"You too Shepard.
Ezra, you drive. "I'll ride the fender with the hood up. When I
yell once, you kick her out of gear and pump the throttle fast. 'when
I yell again, put her in gear and get going."
That was the
way it was. Several times on the way into town, the truck lost power,
showed, threatened to quit.
Each time, Gus yelled to
Ezra as he reached in to twitch the wires from plugs three and four, and
reverse them. Ezra threw the truck out of gear, pumped the throttle.
The motor, freed of load, roared and backfired, Gus switched the wires back
to the proper plugs and yelled to Ezra again. Ezra pulled the truck into
gear, and they went on. In the hospital in town, prompt care brought
Steve around tnd probably saved his life.
Although
Ezra will always swear that it was Blinstock's dust that filled his
carburetor with dirt, Gus reckoned that this had been a gradual accumulation
over a period of time, cause by Ezra's foolish discarding of the air
cleaner, thinking to gain power. Back in the Model Garage, Gus found
Hendricks and Hanratty looking at him, with admiration.
"I don't
know what you did to that truck, Gus," Ezra declared, "but you did it.
You're one smart feller."
"Smart?" Gus
leaned against the bench and lit his pipe. "I wouldn't say that.
Matter of fact, I
ridiculed the idea when the fellow told me about it."
"What
feller?" demanded Ezra.
"This farmer
from out West," Gus said. "He told me how to clear carburetor jets in
an emergency, by switching wires and causing backfiring through the jets."
Gus grinned. "Sure
glad I listened."
END
