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

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 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 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 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 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 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."