A tight smile raised Juan’s lips. “You’ll have to take charge back here, Kit, while I drive. Make them throw their weight on it when I go ahead. You know how. You take charge back here, Kit.”
A tight smile raised Juan’s lips. “You’ll have to take charge back here, Kit, while I drive. Make them throw their weight on it when I go ahead. You know how. You take charge back here, Kit.”
Pimples threw down his shovel. “Come on, everybody,” he shouted. “Come on, snap into it! I’ll take the right side. Girls too. Everybody got to shove.” He marshaled his people at the back of the bus. For a second he looked hungrily at Mrs. Pritchard sitting inside. “She’d just be in the way, I guess,” he said.
Juan climbed into the bus. “Get out and give a shove,” he said to Mr. Pritchard.
The engine started easily enough. Juan let it turn over for a moment. He eased it into compound-low and then he knocked twice on the side of the bus and heard Pimples knock back twice on the rear wall. He speeded his engine a little and let his clutch in. The wheels caught, slipped, groaned, and caught, and “Sweet heart” waddled drunkenly over the bed of rocks and climbed out onto the road. Juan pulled ahead out of the mud on the road and then he set his hand brake. He stood up and looked out the doorway.
“Just pile the tools in here on the floor,” he said. “Come on, let’s get moving.”
He turned on his lights and the beam lighted the gravel road as far as the top of the little hill.
