“I ain’t lost ’em but three times,” he said, and he cranked up the Model-T and climbed in. “I couldn’t help losing ’em the first time. That was when I was laughing at the Yankee casting for bass, and his plug caught me in the open mouth and lifted my teeth out. Nor I couldn’t help it the second time, when Doc and me was rassling in the rowboat and he pushed me in.”

“Yes,” she said, “and how’d you lose ’em the third time?”

His eyes twinkled and he shoved the Ford in low. “Cuttin’ the fool,” he said.

“That’s just it,” she said, and the tears begun to roll out of her eyes. “Anybody with false teeth hadn’t ought to cut the fool!”

Now I always thought it was right cute, the way Uncle Benny fooled Doc about the trained Ford. You know how the old-timey Fords get the gas—it feeds from the hand-throttle on the wheel. Well, Uncle Benny had spent the day before old lady Weller’s funeral at Will’s garage, putting in a foot accelerator. He didn’t say a word to anybody, and Will and me was the only ones knowed he had it. Doc and Uncle Benny stayed three-four days camping at Salt Springs. Now the night they decided to come home, they’d both had something to drink, but Uncle Benny let on like he was in worse shape than he was.

Doc said, “Benny, you better leave me drive.”

Uncle Benny pretended to rock on his feet and roll his head and he said, “I’ve got that Model-T trained to carry me home, drunk or sober.”

Doc said, “Never mind that lie again. You get up there in the seat and whistle in the dogs. I’m fixing to drive us home.”

Well, I’d of give a pretty to of been in the back seat with them bird-dogs that night when Doc drove the Ford back to Oak Bluff. It’s a treat, anyways, to see a fat man get excited. The first thing Doc knowed, the Ford was running away with him. The Ford lights were none too good, and Doc just did clear a stump by the roadside, and he run clean over a black-jack sapling. He looked at the hand throttle on the wheel and here it was where the car had ought to be going about twenty miles an hour and it was going forty-five. That rascal of an Uncle Benny had his foot on the foot accelerator.

Doc shut off the gas altogether and the Ford kept right on going.

He said, “Something’s the matter.”

Uncle Benny seemed to be dozing and didn’t pay no mind. The Ford whipped back and forth in the sand road like a ’gator’s tail. Directly they got on to the hard road and the Model-T put on speed. They begun to get near a curve. It was a dark night and the carlights wobbling, but Doc could see it coming. He took a tight holt of the wheel and begun to sweat. He felt for the brakes, but Uncle Benny never did have any.