“I can’t find it, Juanita, the paper he telephoned me to come and get,” she exclaimed.
“Maybe it’s in there where he sleeps.” And the Mexican girl pointed at the inner door standing barely ajar.
“We’ll see.”
Janet led the way within. There was Martinez’ living- and sleeping-room. The furnishings comprised a bed, an old scratched bureau, a stand with wash-bowl, a red and black Navajo blanket on the floor, a trunk, a stool and a dilapidated stuffed chair––just such a chair as a paper could be hidden in. That into this room the lawyer’s assailants had burst their way was apparent from the splintered door hanging from one hinge at the rear.
Beckoning Juanita to bring the lamp, Janet ran to the arm-chair.
“Ah, here it is!” she cried, when she had turned the piece of furniture over and inserted her hand in the rent. “It wasn’t found, after all! Come away now.”
Relief and exultation replaced her depression of the moment before. She had succeeded; she had helped the lawyer outwit his enemies; she must now return home to await Steele Weir’s arrival, or if he failed in that then go to the dam.
In the outer room she bade the Mexican girl place the lamp on the table once more and blow it out. This was done. They groped forward to the door.
“Follow me out quietly, Juanita,” Janet said. “Only Mr. Martinez knows we’ve been here, and Mr. Weir, the engineer. See, I’m trusting you. This is a very important paper for Mr. Weir, and other men are trying to keep it out of his hands. So you must say nothing to any one about our being here.”
Juanita assented in a whisper. Janet thereupon 149 opened the door and the pair stepped forth. A faint hissing sound directly before them startled both. But the American girl immediately recognized it for what it was, the faint murmur of an automobile engine.
She quietly closed the office door, caught her companion’s arm to lead her away.
“Don’t talk,” she whispered in her ear.
At the same instant the beam of an electric hand torch flashed in their eyes, blinding them. Then as quickly the light was extinguished and a heavy blanket was flung over Janet’s head. Her cry was choked off, but not that of the Mexican girl who had been struck by the corner of the cloth and who heard her mistress struggling in the arms of the man who had seized her. The sound of the struggle moved towards the car and then Juanita, paralyzed by fright, was stunned by a sudden roar of the exhaust, a grind of gears, and a rush in the darkness. The automobile had gone, carrying off Janet Hosmer a muffled prisoner. Juanita regaining use of her legs fled for Doctor Hosmer’s unmindful of the mist against her face.
Janet’s sensation had been that of strangulation and terror. In the thick folds of the blanket, held and lifted by strong arms, all she could offer in the way of resistance was futile kicks. She had been jammed into the automobile seat and firmly kept there by an embrace while the car was being started, which did not relax as the machine gathered speed. For some minutes this lasted, while she strained painfully for breath, and then she perceived the car was stopping.
Her terror increased. What now would happen? These men after overpowering Felipe Martinez had abducted her in their determination to possess themselves 150 of the paper. Finding it in her hand––for she still clutched it––what then? Would they kill her?
The car was now completely at rest. The arm was withdrawn from about her; hands gripped her hands and forced them together; a handkerchief was tightly knotted about her wrists. Afterwards her ankles were bound by a strap. Then the blanket was lifted from her form and head and she gasped in again pure night air.
“Here’s a gag,” said the man at her side. “Keep quiet and I’ll not use it; if you open your mouth to make a sound, I shall. It’s up to you.” And with the hoarse threat she caught the heavy sickening odor of whiskey on the speaker’s breath.
“You, Ed Sorenson! You’ve dared to do this!” she exclaimed, fear vanishing in anger.
“Yes, sweetheart,” came with a mocking accent.
“Untie me this minute and let me out!”
“Oh, no. You’ve got the wrong line on this little game. We’re going for a ride, just you and me, as lovers should.”
Janet began to think fast.
“How did you know I was in Mr. Martinez’ office?” she demanded.
“Because I saw you go in, little one. I was just pulling up at your door to coax you out when I saw you and the Mexican wench appear. So I followed along. Saved me the bother of telling you your father had been hurt in an accident. He’s chasing off somewhere thirty miles from town on a ‘false alarm’ call to attend a dying man. Sorry I had to use the blanket; sorry I have to keep your naughty little hands and feet tied up. But it’s the only way. After we’re married, you’ll forget all about it in loving me.”
So this was the face of the matter. Not the paper 151 she gripped, but she herself was his object. His abduction of her had nothing to do with Martinez’ affair; he knew nothing of the larger plot; and for that reason she experienced a degree of relief.
“I’ll never marry you, be certain of that,” said she, recurring to his statement. “If anything had been needed to settle that point, what you have done now would be enough. You shall pay for this atrocious treatment. Untie my hands.”
“Oh, no. We’re starting on.”
“Your father as well as mine shall know of this.”
“I think not, dearie. We’re going up into the hills where I’ve a nice little cabin fixed up. And we’ll stay there awhile. And then when we come back, you’ll not do any talking. On the contrary, you’ll be anxious to marry me––you’ll be begging me to marry you. Of course! People know we’re engaged, and they’ll know you’ve been away with me for two or three days. Do you think they’ll listen to any story about my carrying you off against your will? They’ll wink when they hear it. Yes, you’ll be ready to marry me all right, all right, when we come back to San Mateo.”
Janet’s blood ran cold at this heartless, black plan to ensnare her into marriage.
“Ed, you would never do a thing like that,” she pleaded. “You’re just trying to scare me with a joke. Be a good fellow and untie my hands and take me home.”
“No joke about this; straight business. I told you you should marry me–––”
“You’re drunk or mad!” she burst out, terrified.
“Neither; perfectly calm. But I’m not the fellow to be tossed over at a whim. I’m holding you to your word, that’s all. You’ll change your mind back as it 152 was by to-morrow; you’ll be crazy to have me as a husband then. I won’t have to tie your hands and feet to keep you at my side when we come riding home to go to the minister’s. Now we’ve had our little talk and understand each other; and it’s beginning to drizzle. Time to start for our little cabin. The less fuss you make, the pleasanter it will be for both of us.”
He set the gears and the car started forward once more. A sensation of being under the paws of a beast, odious and fetid, savage and pitiless, overwhelmed her. That this was no trick of a moment but a calculated scheme to abase and possess her she now realized with a sort of dull horror. And on top of all he was, despite his denial, partly drunk.
Through the terror of her situation two thoughts now continued to course like fiery threads––one a hope, one a purpose. The former rested on Juanita, whom in his inflamed ferocity of intention, the man seemed to have forgotten––on Juanita and Steele Weir, “Cold Steel” Weir; and this failing, there remained the latter, a set idea to kill herself before this brute at her side worked his will. Somehow she could and would kill herself. Somehow she would find the means to free her hands and the instrument to pierce her heart.
Sorenson had switched on his lights. He drove the car through the damp darkness at headlong speed along the trail that leaped from the gloom to meet them and vanished behind. At the end of a quarter of an hour he swung into a canyon; and Janet perceived they were ascending Terry Creek. He stopped the car anew.
“I’ll just take no chances with you,” he exclaimed. “We have to pass your friends, the Johnsons, you know. Had to take my stuff up here in the middle of the night––up one night and back the next––and mighty still too, 153 so that they wouldn’t suspicion I was fixing a little bower for you.”
He bound a cloth over her mouth and again flung the blanket over her head. Janet struggled fiercely for a moment, but finally sank back choking and half in a faint. She was barely conscious of the car’s climbing again. Though when passing the ranch house the man drove with every care for silence, she was not aware of the fact. Her breath, mind, soul, were stifled. She seemed transfixed in a hideous nightmare.
At length her lips and head were released. But her hands and feet were numb. Still feeling as if she were in some dreadful dream she saw the beam of the headlights picking out the winding trail, flashing on trees by the wayside, shining on wet rocks, heard the chatter of the creek over stones and the labor of the engine.
The road was less plain, a mere track now, and steeper. They were climbing, climbing up the mountain side, up into the heavier timber, up into one of the “parks” among the peaks. Johnson’s ranch was miles behind and far below. Occasionally billows of fog swathed them in wet folds that sent a chill to Janet’s bones.
Sorenson held his watch down to the driver’s light.
“Ten o’clock; we’re making good time. Must give the engine a drink––and take one myself.”
He descended to the creek with a bucket, bringing back water to fill the steaming radiator. Afterwards, standing in the light of the car’s lamps, he tilted a flask to his lips and drank deep.
“Not far now; three or four miles. But it’s slow going. Have to make it on ‘low’,” said he, swinging himself up into his place.
Janet held her face turned away. She was thinking 154 of Juanita and Steele Weir. Had the girl gone home again? Or, terrified, had she run to her own home and said nothing? Had the engineer come and waited and learning nothing at last returned to the dam? Despair filled her breast. Even should the Mexican girl have apprised him of the kidnapping, how should he know where to follow? And in the solitude of the wet dark mountains all about her hope died.
She began desperately to tug against the handkerchief binding her wrists.
Suddenly the going became easier and she felt rather than saw that the trees had thinned. A flash of the car lamps at a curve in the trail showed a great glistening wall of rock towering overhead, then this was passed and the way appeared to lead into a grassy open space. A dark shape beside the road loomed into view––a cabin by a clump of pine trees. Sorenson brought the car to a stop a few yards from the house.
“Here at last,” he announced, springing down.
He unstrapped her feet, bade her get out.
“I make a last appeal to your decency and manhood––if you have either,” she said, sitting motionless.
“Rot,” he answered. Half dragging her, half lifting her, he removed her from the machine. Slipping a hand within her arm he led her inside the log house.
“Sit there,” he ordered.
Janet dropped upon the seat, a rude plank bench against the wall farthest from the door. Indeed, fatigue and the numbness of her limbs rendered her incapable of standing.
“When I’ve touched off this fire and set out some grub, then I’ll untie your hands,” he continued. “A snug little cabin, eh? Just the place for us, what? See all the stuff I’ve brought up here to make you warm and 155 happy and comfortable. Regular nest. Lot of work on my part, I want to say.”
He touched a match to the wood already laid in the fireplace, flung off his rain coat and stood to warm his hands at the blaze. Lighting a cigarette, he began placing from a box of supplies plates and food on the table in the middle of the room, but paused to reproduce his flask. With a sardonic grin he lifted the bottle, bowed to Janet and drank the liquor neat. When he had finished, he turned the bottle upside down to show it was empty, then tossed it into a corner. Again he fixed his drunken, mocking smile upon her.
“Can’t preach to me about booze here, can you, honey?” he said. “Ought to take a swallow yourself; warm you up. I have plenty. Guess I better untie your hands now.” He advanced towards her, swaying slightly. “You’re going to love me from this time on, ain’t you, girlie?” He untied the handkerchief and dropped it at his feet. “No nonsense now about trying to get away; I’ll rope you for good if you try to start anything. Hello, what’s that?”
“No; give it to me!” she cried, in alarm as he pulled the folded sheets of paper from her stiffened fingers.
“Something I ought to see, maybe.” Then he added harshly, “Sit down, if you don’t care to have me teach you a thing or two. I’m master here.”
He stepped to the table and drawing a box beside him settled upon it, pulled the candle-stick nearer and began to read the document. Janet glanced swiftly about the room for a weapon. Escape past him she could not, for by a single spring he could bar the way; but could she lay hand on a stick of wood she might fight her way out. None was nearer than the fire, and again he could interpose.
He read on and on, with a darkening brow and an evil glint showing in his eyes. Page by page he perused Saurez’ deposition until he reached the end. Then he got to his feet, shaking the paper at her head.
“You were in on this,” he snarled. “This is what you were in Martinez’ office to get. You’re wise to this cursed scheme to help Weir make my father and Vorse and Burkhardt and Judge Gordon out a gang of swindlers. So they trimmed his father of something––at least I fancy they did, and I hope to God they did, the coward! And you were in with them! You’re not quite the little white angel you’d have people believe, are you? Not quite so innocent and simple as you’ve made me think, anyway. Well, I’ll square all that. That slippery snake, Martinez, I’ll twist his neck the minute I get back to town. I’ll bet a thousand it was framed up to use this when Weir was arrested––but he’ll never use it now!”
He glared at the girl with a face distorted by rage.
“We’ll just burn it here and now,” he continued. “Then we’ll be sure it won’t be used.”
Janet gripped her hands tightly, while her lips opened to utter a wild protest at this desecration. What the document contained she did not yet know, except that it was evidence that fixed upon the men named guilt for some past deed in which Weir had suffered and which would bring them to account. But something more than protest was needed, she saw in a flash, to deflect the man from his purpose and save the sheets from the flame.
She shut her lips for an instant to choke the cry, then said with an assumption of unconcern:
“Go ahead. I didn’t want your father to see it, in any case.”
The paper had almost reached the candle, but the 157 hand that held it paused. Sorenson stared at it, and from it to her. At last a malignant curl of his lips uncovered his teeth.
“Oh, you didn’t want him to see it,” he sneered. “If that’s so, I’ll just save it. He’ll be interested in reading what your friends have prepared to destroy his good name and reputation.”
He folded the document and slipped it into his inner coat pocket. Then he walked towards her. At the look on his face Janet sprang to her feet.
“I’ve changed my mind about the marriage matter, just as you did,” he said. “I agree with you now; there won’t be any marriage. But I’ll have your arms about my neck just the same.”
And he seized her wrist.
“Let me go, let–––” The words ceased on her lips.
Her eyes were riveted on the cabin door; she scarcely felt the man’s loathsome touch on her arm. How had the door come unlatched? And was it only the wind that slowly moved it open?
On leaving the construction camp Steele Weir had whirled away down the river road for San Mateo with a feeling both of satisfaction and of enmity––satisfaction at Martinez’ success in at last having secured the evidence ardently desired, as betokened by his words; enmity at whoever was laying violent hands on the lawyer. Unfortunately when yet half a mile from town his car suffered one of the common misadventures of automobiles:––ping-g-g! sang a tire in a shrill dying whine.
Weir did not stop to change and inflate the tube, but pushed ahead on his mission though at slackened speed. He brought his car to rest before Doctor Hosmer’s house. The windows were lighted, yet at his knock there was no response; so brushing conventionalities aside he entered and called Janet’s name. Only echoes and a following silence greeted his call.
Doubtful whether to remain awaiting the girl’s return or go at once to Martinez’ office in the hope of still finding her, he finally chose the latter course leaving his car where it stood and proceeding on foot, as a result of which he passed in the darkness Juanita hurrying home in a fright. A bad choice and valuable time lost, he afterwards discovered. At Martinez’ office he stepped inside, called the lawyer by name, called Janet Hosmer, stood for a little while in the black room harkening and thinking, then went forth into the street.
This time chance fell his way. He had but come out when he heard footsteps and two men in low-toned talk as they approached; and he withdrew further into the concealing darkness of the street. The new visitors, striking matches at the entrance, walked inside. The men were Vorse and Burkhardt.
“If you had been here, we could have nailed him at once as soon as I had Saurez’ story,” the former said. “Martinez had half an hour and more to get the thing into somebody else’s hands.”
“Well, I was looking after those men up in the hills,” was the growled answer. “Had to feed ’em and have ’em ready for to-morrow night. If we don’t find the document here, we’ll screw its hiding-place out of that dirty greaser if we have to use a cord on his head Indian-fashion. Anyway it ought to be about this office. Martinez didn’t know you had learned about it from Saurez. He’d never let go a paper like that until he had to.”
“I think you’re right there,” Vorse said. “He’d want to sell it for all it was worth. Better shut and lock the door while we’re searching. Don’t care to have any of his friends sticking in their heads while we’re here.”
Burkhardt, who had lighted the lamp, now closed the door, cutting off so far as Steele Weir was concerned both a view of the men and their conversation. However he had learned if not enough, at least considerable. They had not yet gained possession of the paper. They knew nothing of Janet’s part in the affair. They had so far not succeeded in unlocking Martinez’ lips, but undoubtedly they would be able to wring from the lawyer when they went about it the real truth regarding the document. Very likely Martinez had anticipated that, had known his powers were such as not to be greatly able 160 to resist physical torture and had planned to get the evidence into the engineer’s hands before he should be subjected to pains of the flesh. That would be remembered to his credit, along with all the rest. Where Martinez was being held prisoner was the additional information Weir should have liked to glean before the door was shut.
Postponing for the time the hunt along this line, he returned to the Hosmer dwelling. In answer to his knock and call on this visit the trembling Juanita appeared, immediately pouring forth a recital of the happenings at the office as affecting her mistress.
“You’ve told no one else?” he demanded.
“No, señor. She said I was to say nothing of her being there for the paper, and I was waiting for her father to come. But she informed me Mr. Martinez and you knew she was there, so I’ve told you.”
“And you saw nothing of this man who cast the blanket over her head and seized her?”
“It was dark; we had just come out of the office. But––but the car sounded like Ed Sorenson’s. I’ve heard it start from here many times with the same loud noise. They had quarreled, Señor Weir, and were no longer engaged.”
“I know. Which way did he drive off?”
“East, down the lower end of the street.”
“Bring a lamp out to my car, so I can fix my tire.”
With the girl holding the light by his side the engineer worked with concentrated energy in stripping the wheel, in inserting a new tube, replacing the tire and pumping it up. The thin drizzle glistened on his face, but for all that it was none the less determined, stern.
“You need not be afraid for yourself; no one but us knows you were there,” he said to her, climbing into his 161 machine. “Nor for Miss Janet, either. I’ll bring her home safely. When Dr. Hosmer returns, tell him everything. Also ask him to await our coming. Be sure and say to him that I’ll bring her home unharmed and that I advise silence in regard to the matter until I have talked with him. You will remain quiet, of course. This isn’t a thing to be gossiped about.”
“No, señor.”
Away the automobile shot under the impulsion of the gas. Minutes, golden minutes, had been wasted in taking up the pursuit because of his going to Martinez’ office and because of the flat tire. Sorenson now would be miles away with his prisoner.
Sweeping out of town with the car’s headlights illuminating the road, Steele Weir blessed the drizzling mist that dampened the dust so as to leave a tire’s imprint. Almost at once he picked up the track, for not more than twenty or twenty-five minutes had elapsed since Sorenson’s flight and not even a horseman had since been over the way.
Though he knew it not, the interval of time had been reduced by the stop made by the first machine, a mile or so out of town, when the abductor removed the blanket from Janet Hosmer’s head to announce his evil scheme. From the main road leading to Bowenville Weir saw the car’s trail turn aside into a mesa track pointing obliquely for Terry Creek canyon; and he suspected that Sorenson was making a long drive northward, skirting the mountain range and working away from the railroad-tapped region.
Once he thought he caught a flash of light far ahead of him, but knew this was an illusion. Through this rainy darkness no car’s beam, however powerful, would show half a mile. The mist beat against his face in a 162 steady stream as he rushed forward in the night, his eyes immovable on the wet twin tire-marks stamped on the road, his iron grip on the wheel, his ears filled with the steady hum of the engine. If Sorenson had driven fast, Steele Weir drove faster.
At Terry Creek he plunged down the bank, across the water and up on the other side without a change of gears, rocking and lurching. Once on the smooth trail again the car seemed to stretch itself like a greyhound for the race northward. But on a sudden he brought the automobile to an abrupt halt. The surface of the road was undisturbed; nothing had passed here.
Swinging back again on the way he had come, Weir recrossed the creek and slowly retraced his course. Then with an exclamation of satisfaction he picked up the track where it turned up the canyon trail. But why was the man going to the Johnson ranch? Mystified by this baffling procedure on Sorenson’s part, he nevertheless headed up the stream with no lessening of his purpose to overtake the other.
At the ranch house, whose kitchen window was lighted, he stopped and leaped out. Johnson and Mary both answered his thumping knock.
“Is Janet Hosmer here?” he questioned, while his eyes darted about the kitchen. Then he made his own reply, “I see she’s not. Ed Sorenson kidnapped her to-night and drove to this canyon. Did you hear a car?”
Mary faced her father.
“You remember I thought I heard one!” she cried. “But the sound was so low I wasn’t sure, and when I went to the window I saw nothing. I didn’t hear it again. Father said it was just my imagination.”
“Where does this road lead?”
“Up into the timber and to a ‘park.’ Used to be an 163 old wood road. Sheepmen sometimes use it to take their wagons up above; sometimes cattle outfits too while on round-ups.”
“Could an auto go ahead on it?”
“Yes, I guess so. By hard driving.”
“Then he’s up there.”
Weir ran back to his car, jumped in.
“Let me go with you,” Johnson shouted after him.
“No, I can handle the fellow,” the engineer answered. And again his machine started on. “How long ago was it that you heard him, Mary?” was his parting question.
“’Bout fifteen minutes ago,” she cried.
Fifteen minutes! But the girl’s reckoning might be vague, and “fifteen” minutes be half an hour. At any rate, with the road ascending among the peaks Sorenson’s speed would be greatly diminished. The incline would be against him, the uneven twisting rain-washed trail would require careful driving, the rain would hamper his sight. Yet the fellow he pursued could not be more than three or four miles ahead at most.
On and on Weir pressed. The mist thickened; black wet tree trunks loomed before him like ghosts and sank out of view again; the road wound along the stream among rocks and bushes and over hillocks with all the difficult sinuosity of a serpent’s track; in his ears persisted the chuckling talk of the creek, flowing in darkness except when lighted by his car’s lamps as the machine plunged through a ford, as became more and more frequent with the ascent and the narrowing of the canyon.
Five miles, ten miles, fifteen miles he must have come since leaving the ranch house. His car now was high in the mountain range, running on low gear, the engine working hard in the thin air and against the steep grade. 164 He was not making more than five miles an hour, he judged, at this moment. The radiator was boiling and steaming like a cauldron. But he might be sure that if his travel was slow, Sorenson’s was no better; the road was the same for the pursued as for the pursuer.
At the end of another half hour he came around a ledge of rock, where the creek flowed some fifty feet below and the granite wall allowed just room to pass in a hair-pin turn. There a light gleamed before him like a beacon, a dim gleam of a window. It was perhaps a hundred yards distant. It marked the end of the trail, the end of the search.
Here was Janet Hosmer!
And he had come in time. They could not have been here long, for Sorenson’s start had not been sufficient for that; the scoundrel had not yet recovered his breath from his hard drive, so to speak. He probably would imagine himself safe and so be in no haste to consummate his vile plan of enjoying his helpless victim.
Rage that until now had been lying cold and implacable in Steele Weir’s breast began to flame in his veins and brain. He drove his car past the rock and off the trail upon an open grassy space, very carefully, very quietly. Next he stopped the engine and put out the lights, then he got out, felt his gun in its holster and gazed ahead for an instant.
A form had passed and repassed before the window––Sorenson’s figure, of course. Brute, coward, degenerate he was, and to be dealt with as such. Not only as such, indeed, but as a wretch who had dared to touch Janet Hosmer against her will, to drag her from her home to this lonely spot by violence for his own bestial purposes.
The blood seemed like to burst Steele Weir’s heart. This sweet, honest, kind-souled, noble girl! Janet 165 Hosmer, so bright-eyed and pure! She, who had suffered this man’s hate to save Martinez’ document, who had dared peril to help him, Weir! All the hunger of heart of years, and all the stifled affection, now went out to her. He loved her; the veil was rent from his mind and he realized the fact indisputably––he loved Janet Hosmer. And the great creature of an Ed Sorenson had dared to seize her with brutal hands!
Weir broke into a run. By instinct he kept the trail, though once or twice stumbling and once barely missing a collision with a tree. When he reached the cabin, he dropped to a walk and crept to the window, which was without glass or frame, open to the night. Peering in he perceived Sorenson at the table reading a document, and as he watched he had no need to be told this was the paper that so vitally concerned himself.
At last Sorenson got to his feet, shaking his hand at Janet Hosmer who sat against the cabin wall and beginning to speak. Weir listened for a little. Then he stole along the log house to find the door.
At last his finger touched the latch. He lifted it soundlessly, as silently pushed the door ajar until there was space for him to slip in. This he did. His mouth was shut hard, his eyes watchful, his right hand was closed about the butt of his revolver still resting in the holster.
Over Sorenson’s shoulder he saw Janet Hosmer’s face, pale and drawn but with a sudden joy flaming there. If ever gratitude were written on human countenance, it was on hers. Gratitude––and more! Something that sent Steele Weir’s blood rushing anew through his body, with hope, with a song, with he knew not what.
Janet suddenly jerked herself free and stepped back, her head held high and proud.
“You’ll never touch me again, you coward. Look behind you,” she exclaimed.
Involuntarily Sorenson turned head on shoulder. The frown still darkened his liquor-flushed face and the sneer yet twisted his lips so that his mustache was drawn back from his teeth. Thus he remained as if changed to stone.
What he saw was the man he most dreaded, with a shadow of a smile on his lips, his figure motionless, his hand ready, like an avenging Nemesis from out of the night. A perceptible shudder shook the fellow. Weir it was––“Cold Steel,” whose counter-stroke against one man already had been swift and deadly, whom nothing checked or turned or terrified, who now for a second time was plucking away the fruit of Sorenson’s efforts, who probably on this occasion would shoot him outright.
For a moment Steele Weir regarded him in silence. But at last he spoke:
“Stand away from that lady, you skunk!”
Sorenson moved hastily aside.
Steele Weir crossed the cabin to Janet’s side.
“You are unhurt?” he asked, his eyes scanning her face anxiously.
“Yes. And, oh, how glad I am you came!” she cried, low. “I knew you would not fail me if you but learned of my plight; but it’s wonderful you should be here so soon. I prayed every minute of my ride that Juanita would find and tell you.”
“I couldn’t come half as fast as I wished.” His smile assured and cheered her. Then as his glance fell on her wrists, still red and creased from being bound, he exclaimed, “What’s this? Let me see.” And he caught and lifted her hands to look.
“He had you tied?” Weir’s gaze moved away to Sorenson.
“Yes. Hands and feet.”
“All the way? All the long ride?”
“Yes––look out!”
Janet’s words, half a gasp, half a shriek, gave warning of Sorenson’s movement, though none was needed. While apparently neglecting to watch the other, Weir had kept the man sharp in the corner of his eye. The motion with which his hand darted to his hip and up again was a single lightning-like sweep; and his weapon covered his enemy before the latter’s hand so much as got his revolver in grasp.
“Drop it; drop it on the floor!” the engineer ordered. The gun clattered on the rough-hewn logs. “Now put your hands up and turn your back this way.” Sorenson obeyed, not without his eyes speaking the disappointed wrath and hatred his tongue dared not utter. “I should have allowed you to make a full draw and then killed you,” Steele Weir went on. “That would have been the simplest way to settle your case. Only I don’t like to kill bunglers, even when they deserve it.”
He re-sheathed his own gun and strode forward, picking up the one on the floor––a black, ugly-looking automatic. This he dropped into a coat pocket.
“Now face about, you cur,” he commanded. “I want a good look at a man––no, I’ll not call you a man––at a low-lived imitation of a man who is such a sneaking, dirty beast that all he can do is to trap and tie up a helpless girl. I don’t know yet just what I shall do with you, but I know what I ought to do––I ought to choke the miserable life out of you! You’re not fit to live. You soil the earth and pollute the air. But you’re of the same treacherous, underhanded, scoundrelly breed as your father, same yellow flesh and blood, same crooked mind and heart, same sort of poisonous snake, and since you get it all from him I suppose it can’t be helped. Nor changed, except by killing and burying you. One thing is sure, when I’m done you won’t be trying any more deals like this. Bah, you slimy reptile, you belong in a cess-pool!”
Under Steele Weir’s biting speech Sorenson’s face went red and pale by turns. His lips twitched and worked, moving his mustache in little angry lifts, while he breathed with short spasmodic intakes.
“First, you’re after Mexican girls,” Weir went on mercilessly. “Then Mary Johnson, whom I pulled out 169 of your vile fingers. And now it’s––” The engineer’s fist arose suddenly above the other’s head. “Why, I ought to drop you dead in your tracks for so much as looking at Janet Hosmer! Why don’t you fight? Why don’t you give me a chance, you cowardly girl-robber? Haven’t you a spark of––well, you haven’t, I see. I’ll just tie you up and later figure out some way to make you suffer for this night’s work.” And with a gesture of disgust Weir turned away.
It was the moment Sorenson had been waiting for. As the engineer’s back came about, exposed in one instant of carelessness, the man struck Weir full force on the neck, sending him staggering. Then Sorenson leaped for the doorway.
Janet screamed. Weir recovered himself and whirled around, whipping forth his revolver and firing two shots. But the bullets only buried themselves in the door slammed shut after the escaping prisoner.
“I myself ought to be shot for this,” Steele snapped out.
He ran across the cabin, flung the door open, sprang out. The uselessness of seeking his enemy in the black wet gloom was only too evident, but he would not give up. Gun in hand, he stood listening for sound of fleeing footsteps.
A light hand gripped his arm. Janet had followed him out, was at his side. Barely audible he heard her quick, excited breathing.
“Must you shoot him?” she whispered.
“Why spare him for more deviltry? But I’ll not have the chance now.”
“I can’t bear to think of even his blood being on our hands. Let him go,” Janet said.
“He’s gone without our permission, I’d say.”
“Isn’t it just as well? I’m not harmed, and he’ll never dare show his face in San Mateo again,” she said. “He’ll have to stay away; he’ll leave for good.”
“Not until I see him first. I want that paper.”
“Oh, the paper, I forgot it! And it’s in his pocket,” she cried, in despair.
“Like the fool I was, I forgot it for the moment too,” Steele said bitterly. “When I could have had it at once I must go off ranting about his meanness. It was thought of what he had done to you that made me overlook the paper; that set me boiling. Lost my head.”
Janet’s answer was almost sufficient recompense for even such a serious deprivation as that of the document.
“I’ll never forget that you were angry in my behalf,” she said, softly. “But perhaps you can gain possession of the paper yet.”
Before he could make a reply the sound of a motor engine startled them. Sorenson was in his car, not far off. Weir immediately plunged forward through the darkness in the direction of the noise, uttering a shout for the man to stop or be shot. But after the taste of liberty that he already had had Sorenson was prepared to take further chances; the engine’s roar burst into full volume and the car leaped ahead, while its driver sent back a derisive curse to the cabin.
Weir fired again, fired two or three times at the sound. Perhaps Sorenson was crouching safely out of range; at any rate, the bullets did not reach him, for the automobile plunged away. Steele slowly went back to the girl.
“How can he see without lights?” she questioned.
“He can’t see, but he’d rather risk not seeing the road than drawing my fire. There’s a bad place there at the 171 rock; he’d better turn on his lamps if he wants to round that.”
Sensing the danger that threatened Sorenson, both remained unmoving, trying to penetrate the darkness, harkening to the automobile’s retreating murmur. A curiosity, a sort of detached suspense, rooted them to the spot.
“Ah, he’s snapped them on!” Janet said, almost with relief.
The powerful beam of the headlights had suddenly blazed forth. Either feeling that he was safe from Weir’s gun or realizing that he was on the verge of a graver danger, Sorenson had chosen to make the light. He was going at headlong speed; even where they watched, Steele and Janet perceived that,––and only his fear of the peril behind which made him heedless of the difficulties in front could account for that reckless pace.
The light leaped out into the night. Something else too seemed to spring forth within the circle of the glow, dark, sudden, imminent, rushing at the machine. A frantic jerk this way and that of the beam showed the driver’s mad effort to avoid the towering wall of granite. Then a scream rang back to the man and girl before the cabin. Followed instantly a crash, an extinguishment of the light, darkness, silence, and finally a thin quivering flame at the base of the ledge, delicate and blue, like a dancing chimera.
Janet’s hand reached out and closed in Steele Weir’s, and he covered it with his other hand.
“Oh, how terrible!” she gasped. “Did you see? The rock seemed to smite him!”
“Yes.”
“He must be dead.”
“You remain here and I’ll go find out.”
He led her into the cabin and to a stool by the table, where resting her elbows on the board she pressed her hands over her eyes as if to blot out the sight she had just witnessed. After all she had suffered, the climax of this dreadful spectacle left her unnerved, weak, shuddering.
“Don’t stay long,” she whispered. “Come back as quick as you can. This cabin, this whole spot in the mountains, is awful. I can almost feel him hovering over me.”
“You mustn’t permit such thoughts.” He gave her shoulder an encouraging pat. “It will take but a few minutes to see if he’s still alive and then we’ll start home. You’ve been the bravest girl going and will continue to be, I know. Everything is over; nothing can happen to you now.”
Weir went out. He perceived that the wrecked car was fully afire by this time, its flames illuminating the granite ledge and the ground about. Evidently the machine’s fuel tank had been smashed under the impact and the gasoline had escaped, preventing an explosion but fiercely feeding the blaze. He ran towards the place.
At first he did not find Sorenson, so that he supposed him buried beneath the wreckage, but presently he discovered his crumpled form lying jammed between the base of the ledge and a boulder. Weir lifted the limp figure from its resting place and bore it to open ground, where he made an examination of the still form. Clearly Sorenson had been pitched free of the car and crushed against the rock wall. His cap was missing; his coat was ripped up the back and a part of it gone as if caught and held by some obstruction in the car when he had been shot forth; blood and a great bruise marked one cheek; and the way his legs dragged when he was lifted 173 up indicated some serious injury to those members. But the man still breathed.
“Miracles haven’t ceased,” Weir muttered, when he had made sure of the fact. “But his chance is slim at best.”
It would be false to say that the engineer felt compassion at the other’s sudden catastrophe; he experienced none. On the contrary he had a sense of justice fittingly executed, as if, escaping bullets and man’s blows, Sorenson had been felled by a more certain power, by the inevitable consequences of his own deeds and sins, by a wall of evil he himself had raised as much as by a wall of stone.
He searched the man’s breast pocket, then hunted for the missing document among the stones and bushes. At last he gave up for the time further seeking, with a conviction that the vital paper was gone for good, destroyed in the fire of the burning car. But for his own over-confidence, his belief he had Sorenson a safe prisoner back there in the cabin, the sheets might be secure in his pocket. Well, it was too late now.
He again lifted the unconscious man in his arms and returned to the log house. Inside he laid him on the rude bed which Sorenson himself had spread with sheets and blankets.
“He’s alive?” Janet asked, awed.
“Alive, but badly hurt.”
“You’ll leave him here?”
“Yes, while I take you away. We could do nothing for him in any case; his injuries are grave and need a doctor’s help. The best service we can perform in his behalf is to start your father or some other physician here as quickly as possible. He may live or he may die; that isn’t in our hands. He’s unconscious and not 174 suffering, and probably will not feel pain for some hours if he does live, so we can go without feeling that we’re robbing him of any of his chances of recovery. Your conscience may rest quite easy on that point. Come, we’ll start at once. The quicker we reach your father, the quicker he will arrive here.”
When they were in his car he wrapped a robe about her against the sharp chill.
“I am cold; my teeth are chattering,” she said.
“You’ve been under a great strain. Just lie back and rest and think of something else than what has happened, if you can,” he urged.
“I’ll try to.”
The lamps blazed out at his touch of the switch and the car began to move. She closed her eyes. She did not wish to see the scene of the smash, with the leaping fire and the horrible pile of crushed metal. Indeed, she drew the robe before her face, where she kept it for some time.
“Are we past the place?” she asked, finally.
“A long way past.”
“Thank heaven! Nothing shall ever drag me up this road again!”
“It will not take us long to reach Johnson’s and be off this trail altogether, for it’s down-hill going all the way.”
“You said nothing about the paper? Did you get it?”
“No; it wasn’t on him. I’ll return for another look, but it fell in the fire, I think, and burned.”
“Do you know what was in it, Mr. Weir?”
“No. But I can guess.”
“I know a little of its contents, from what he said before you entered. It was a statement, something about his father and others doing dishonest acts, I think. He didn’t seem to be quite clear what it was about 175 either, but he spoke of your father and declared he hoped the others had swindled him, which he inferred had happened. I didn’t know your father ever had been in this country. That’s the reason you hate those men, Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Vorse and Mr. Burkhardt; because of some injury they worked your father.”
“That’s the reason. And that too is why they’re trying to get rid of me one way or another. But they didn’t hire the Mexican to attempt to shoot me; Ed Sorenson employed him. Martinez, when you told me the man’s name, telegraphed around the country from Bowenville till he got track of the fellow. He also secured evidence that a white man resembling Ed Sorenson had been seen talking with him at the place he came from. So we can draw our conclusions.”
“Then he hired the man to assassinate you!”
“Looks like it. Because I took Mary Johnson away from him, and from fear. He was afraid you might learn of the matter, I suppose, and decided to get rid of me. He’s a coward at heart, but none the less a criminal by instinct, so he hired another to do what he dared not attempt himself. A crook like his father, but with less nerve.”
Janet was silent while the car wound its way down the creek road, through the misty darkness and among the invisible peaks. The full danger that she had escaped was but now making itself clear to her mind.
“If he would go so far as to try to murder you,” she faltered, “I surely could have expected no pity from him.”
“Now listen to me,” he said. “I’m going to give you a little scolding: you must forget all this business; it just makes you fearful and unhappy. The past is over, and he’s out of your life for good. Look at it that way. 176 Consider the thing as a bad dream, done with and no more important. That’s ‘the right view to take’”––he paused, then added softly––“Janet.”
“How strong-souled you are!” she whispered.
Strong, in truth, he seemed. Ignoring danger he had come swift on Sorenson’s track and rescued her, saved her, kept her clean from her assailant’s infamous brutishness. The one was a knave and a beast; but he, Steele Weir, was a man, clear to see, quick to act, hard towards enemies, gentle to friends. Every particle a man––sure of himself, and fearless, and true-hearted, and firm of soul.
She pressed her hands tight against her breast. He was a man one could love and honor. “Cold Steel” Weir they called him––and, she divined, his love if ever given would be as lasting as hoops of steel.