In the Shadow of the Hills by George C. Shedd (the best ebook reader for android txt) 📕

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 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 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. 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 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.


CHAPTER XVII

EARTH'S RETRIBUTION

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