"don't you know me?"

"Get off! get off!" roared the man, going at once into a flurry. "Whose monkey is this, anyway? Police! Police!"

The man, naturally, was in a highly excited state of mind and thought the simian was upon him again. Just then, the driver of the machine found a cleared space ahead and started for it. He started so quickly that Hiram was thrown from the running board, dropped to the hard pavement, and there stumbled against and fallen over by the jostling mob.

This rough usage was more than Hiram could stand. The senses were being knocked out of him by swift degrees. He felt his wits going, and he made a frantic attempt to stay them as they drifted away. The attempt was useless, however, and a great darkness suddenly descended upon Hiram and closed him in.

When he regained his senses, he was lying on a bench in a drug store. A clerk was holding a handkerchief, saturated with a drug of some kind, to his nostrils, and a bluecoat was standing near, twirling his club and looking down at Hiram speculatively.

"Question is," said the policeman, "what is he doing with two hats?"

"That's more than I can tell you, officer," answered the clerk. "Ah, he's coming to!"

Hiram sat up on the bench and pushed aside the drug-soaked handkerchief. "Dad!" he murmured confusedly.

"I'm not your dad," said the officer. "I'm just the fellow who pulled you out of the crowd. Where'd you get that hat?"

Hiram looked down. His own hat was on his head and had, in some manner, remained with him throughout all the excitement, but in his hand he was clutching, like grim death, a battered black Stetson.

Turning the hat over, Hiram looked into the crown. The gilt letters, "U. H." met his eyes.

"It's dad's hat," he gurgled. "Upton Hill, that's his name! I knew I had a bean on the right number! I–I—"

A bit of white showed under the sweatband. Westerners, of a certain type, sometimes carry important documents under the sweatband of their hats. Hiram pulled his object out of the Stetson, examined it, and then inquired his way to the nearest telegraph office. Five minutes later he had sent the following telegram:

"OWEN CLANCY, the Motor Wizard, Phoenix, Arizona: Hot on the trail. You said you would help me find dad. Come to Los Angeles at once and get busy. Meet me Renfrew House.

HIRAM."

"This here's a great day for me," murmured Hiram, rubbing his bruises as he turned away from the operator's window. "I reckon that'll fetch Clancy, if he's well enough to come. Him and me can run out this happy trail together, with ground to spare. That red-headed wizard has got more sense in a minute than I have in a year, and I reckon we'll get along. He's a good feller to tie to, in a time like this."

CHAPTER II.

CLANCY HITS THE "HAPPY TRAIL."

"How's the shoulder, Clancy?" Doctor Ferguson asked, as the young motor wizard walked into his office.

"I know it belongs to me," was the smiling reply, "every time I make a move, but I guess it's coming along all right at that, doc."

"No reason why it shouldn't. You're as tough as a piece of whalebone, and a little nick like that can't put you on the retired list. Sit down here–I've got a few words to say to you."

The doctor indicated a chair close to his desk, and then sank back in his own seat with the air of one who is about to say something weighty and important.

"Don't you try to scare me about anything, doc," said Clancy apprehensively, as he slid into the chair.

"Tush!" and the physician wagged his head. "You haven't got sense enough to be scared at anything. That's the main trouble with you. It's two weeks since you went to Wickenburg and got in front of that bullet. We kept you in bed for a week, and now you have been on your feet for another week. So far as the wound is concerned, Clancy, you are all right, but so far as something else is concerned, you are all wrong." Ferguson's eyes narrowed and he leveled a forefinger at his patient. "What happened, up there at Wickenburg?" he demanded.

"What happened?" repeated Clancy. "Why, you just spoke of that. I got in front of a bullet."

"Stop, trying to play horse with me!" went on the doctor sourly. "Something took place between you and your partner, Lafe Wynn, at Wickenburg, and I want to know what it was."

Clancy stiffened.

"That's a personal matter, Doctor Ferguson," he answered, "and I don't have to explain it to anybody."

"Well, you needn't get hot about it. There's something on your mind, and it's holding back your complete recovery. I'm asking questions and talking from the standpoint of your physician. If I knew the nature of the thing that bothered you, very possibly I could take means to counteract it."

Clancy was impressed by Ferguson's shrewdness. Yet he had no intention of revealing the cause of his secret worry.

How could he tell Ferguson, or anybody else, what really happened at Wickenburg? Only two or three people knew that Lafe Wynn had forged Clancy's name to a check and had absconded with that money, and with all the cash assets of the firm of Clancy & Wynn. Only two or three knew how Clancy had trailed Wynn to Wickenburg and had sent him back to Phoenix to take charge of the Square-deal Garage, as usual, while he–Clancy–was in bed in the other town for a week.

Apparently all was the same as it ever had been between the two partners. In this instance, however, surface indications were not to be trusted.

Clancy's confidence in Wynn had been rudely shattered. The motor wizard had spared his partner–had been generous with him, in fact, far beyond his deserts. This was not particularly on Wynn's account, but on account of Wynn's mother, an old lady who had come to Phoenix on the very day Wynn had absconded.

Mrs. Wynn, proud of the business success her son had made, had come to him so that he might make her a home in her declining years. Clancy had not the heart to tell the old lady the exact situation, and he had gone to Wickenburg to get Lafe and make him return to Phoenix.

Wynn knew that Clancy had spared him on his mother's account. This knowledge caused a restraint between the two partners, all the greater because Wynn's forgery, and defalcation had wiped out all the cash assets of Clancy and the firm–some fifteen thousand dollars which had not been recovered.

Clancy would not tell all this to any one, for fear it might reach Mrs. Wynn. And he was anxious that Wynn should have another chance, without letting the one error of an otherwise blameless life weigh in the scales against him.

"I'll get along, doctor," observed Clancy. "I'll bet all the fretting I do won't land on me so hard you can notice it."

"Confound it," burst out the doctor, "I do notice it! You've got to get away from things for a while. Take the Happy Trail, Clancy, and run it out. I reckon you can afford it–after the way you held up that street-car company."

"Happy Trail?" echoed Clancy; "what's that?"

"It's the carefree road of pure and unadulterated joy," explained Ferguson solemnly. "It takes you out of yourself, gives you new scenes and experiences, and finally you wake up feeling better than you ever felt before in your life."

"Lead me to it!" said Clancy.

"I wish I could," was the answer, "but I can't. A Happy Trail for you might be a mighty miserable one for me, and vice versa. You'll have to find it for yourself, Clancy, but when you do find it, hit it hard!"

"That's a fine prescription–I don't think," laughed Clancy, getting up to leave. "You tell me what I must do, but don't tell me how I'm to do it."

"I'm as frank with you as you are with me," growled Ferguson. "Good-by!"

Clancy got back to the Square-deal Garage to find the whole force of employees moving the repair shop over to the garage known as the Red Star.

In order to keep Rockwell, of the Red Star, from driving the