In the Shadow of the Hills Part 25

"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 doc.u.ment here, we'll screw its hiding-place out of that dirty greaser if we have to use a cord on his head Indian-fas.h.i.+on.

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 doc.u.ment. Very likely Martinez had antic.i.p.ated that, had known his powers were such as not to be greatly able 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, senor. 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, Senor 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 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, senor."

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 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed and repa.s.sed 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l purposes.

The blood seemed like to burst Steele Weir's heart. This sweet, honest, kind-souled, n.o.ble girl! Janet Hosmer, so bright-eyed and pure! She, who had suffered this man's hate to save Martinez'

doc.u.ment, 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 gla.s.s or frame, open to the night. Peering in he perceived Sorenson at the table reading a doc.u.ment, 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 s.p.a.ce for him to slip in. This he did. His mouth was shut hard, his eyes watchful, his right hand was closed about the b.u.t.t 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 grat.i.tude were written on human countenance, it was on hers. Grat.i.tude--and more! Something that sent Steele Weir's blood rus.h.i.+ng anew through his body, with hope, with a song, with he knew not what.