Lars said, “No, the spare’s on it. I’m going to have to order a new tire. But I hope it never gets a flat. They have inner tubes and they’re harder than hell to change. But these are fine, and they last a long time,” he added hastily, not wanting to discourage his patron.

He went to wheel a long, narrow, many-drawered steel chest out of the way so Betsy could walk around the car. “He sold me the tool chest, too.”

Jill muttered, “Takes lots of tools, I see.”

“No, it doesn’t,” retorted Lars. “No more than most old cars, anyhow. It’s just that some of them are… different.”

“How did he wreck it?” asked Betsy, coming to the damaged fender and noting that the big brass headlight was smashed as well. She thought the bulb had been torn out until she saw the other headlight didn’t have a bulb, either. They must not make the kind of bulbs it took anymore.

“Last time he had it out, he was run off the road by a gawker. You got to watch for those gawkers, he told me. Anyhow, the wreck triggered a heart attack, so he figured he’d better sell.”

“Can you get new headlights, too? I see there aren’t any bulbs in these.”

“They don’t come with bulbs, they’re acetylene. But they aren’t very bright, so we don’t run at night.”

“Can you start it?” asked Betsy, coming the rest of the way around it. “I mean, right now? Or is there something wrong with the motor, too?”

“It runs fine,” Lars said firmly, glancing at Jill. “Dr. Fine taught me how to start it and had me do it alone a couple of times. It’s not hard, but you can’t do it fast. His personal record for getting it powered up was seventeen and a half minutes.”

Lars got out the owner’s manual and consulted it, then checked to make sure there was water and the two kinds of fuel in adequate amounts. The car had several gauges, but not, apparently, a fuel gauge. Lars used a wooden ruler dipped into the tanks to determine fuel levels. “It holds twenty-five gallons of water, seventeen gallons of unleaded gas, and two gallons of Coleman gas, plus a gallon of steam oil, which is a blend of four-hundred-weight oil and tallow.”