WEIR TAKES UP THE HUNT
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 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 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 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.