I
The two cars rushed through the night, switch-backing up and down the strange streets of that strange town. Clement had the queer feeling that he was passing through a dream city created by some fantastic fairy tale illustrator. The streets of Cobalt wound haphazard amid houses built haphazard. The bumpy driveway wriggled between buildings now on the road-level, now hanging above it on rocky outcrops. Now an ordinary side road was passed in the dusk. Now a flight of stairs shot upward in place of a road.
“We’ve got him,” said Clement cheerfully, looking out at the speeding car ahead, “and we’ll get Neuburg through him. That is, if your driver——”
“That’s all right,” said the detective Gatineau. “He’s game. I put him wise before I hired him. For twenty dollars and a little excitement he’ll do all you want him to do.”
“There may be gunning,” said Clement.
“He knows that. All he said was that the burg had been kind of sluggish anyhow for the past six months.... This is a mining town, you know. Don’t you worry, he thrives on excitement.”
The cars swept out of the town. Between the stiff, rocky hills and the giant humpings of silver mine workings they were pressing towards the wild tracts of the open country. The road grew deliriously worse.
“What about headlights?” asked the detective. “We don’t want Siwash or his driver to see us.”
“They haven’t yet,” said Clement. “That rear lamp would go out if they did. It’s a closed car, anyhow, and unless we were right up to them I don’t think they would notice our lights. But to be on the safe side they might be half-switched down, though.”
He rose and spoke to the genial and husky driver about this.
“Sure,” said that individual, and he checked down his lights until there was but a faint radiance on the road before them. “If this wasn’t such a hell of a trail I’d cut ’em out altogether. Must have some light. I’ll bump my springs to scrap else.”
“Put down all repairs to us,” said Clement. “You’re a good scout to take this on. There may be trouble.”
“Ain’t exactly done tatting all me life meself,” grinned the driver.
“I guess you haven’t,” smiled Clement, looking at his burly figure. “Where are those chaps heading for?”
“Hudson Bay and the Arctic Belt gen’rally, sh’d say, from the way they’re hitting it,” grinned the man. “Somewhere fresh t’me anyways. Not that I mind novelties, only I hope this trail holds to wherever they’re going.”
There was, indeed, every indication that the trail would not. It had become astonishingly rough, so that they bumped and soared on the padded seats in an astounding way, their only satisfaction being that Siwash and his companion in front were also feeling the strain, and had checked their pace down to something more humanly bearable.
As the road grew rougher the country became more inhospitable and empty. Its emptiness, in fact, was impressive. They had, some time ago, left the last vestige of the township behind them. They had passed the last of the outlying mines—the blank and almost inhumanly empty grouping of a discarded and probably forgotten working. They were now heaving and shouldering along this strange trail, where grass proclaimed a lack of traffic, going always into a bleak, strange land where not even the bark of a dog gave indication of the dwellings of man. The enormous emptiness of it weighed on the mind.
The country over which they had been passing for hours, it seemed, had been flat. At length it became broken up. The hard rock was thrusting its way up through the thin soil, first in little outcrops, then in mounds and bluffs that resembled the ground at Cobalt. The trail, which had gone forward as directly as an arrow, began to twist, worming round the rocky pockets, forever finding the most negotiable way. Then, in the midst of his automatic and quite unsplenetic growls at the tricky steering this new circumstance demanded, the driver said, “Hey, look at that big Swede. Hey, but just you look at him, hitting it up again.”
It was a fact. The car in front of them had abruptly increased its speed. From its steady, but cautious pace, it had suddenly started to run away.
“Have they seen us?” asked Clement.
“Not they,” said the driver. “That’s the explanation.” He pointed ahead of him towards the trail. Even as he pointed the reason for the change of speed became obvious. The car ceased its wild and stormy bumping. They were still pitched about, but the rough trail across country had ceased; they were on a road. As they wound in and out among the rocks they could see the fairly even and rutted surface under their headlights.
“Where are we? What road?” demanded Clement.
“I miss my guess,” said the driver, his eyes fixed warily ahead for the abrupt and surprising twists. “I don’t know more’n you. It’s Nowhere in the middle of Neverwas.”
They ran on, twisting and turning along the crooked, rock-dodging path. Clement’s pulse began to beat with excitement. A made road—that meant a house. A house meant....
The driver said abruptly, his expert eye flashing to the side of the track and back again with a darting glance, “Thought so ... workings.” He pointed with a stabbing finger. “Stuff taken out of there—see. Ugh! ye brute, do ye want to go, prospecting wid yer nose?”
Clement looked to the side of the trail, but saw nothing of the signs of mining which the driver noted at a glance. But he saw and felt the road, saw signs of the presence of man in that, and he recognized that they were coming to the critical point of their ride. He braced himself alertly, looking ahead. His hand went into his pocket, caught at the automatic pistol and held it ready.
“Water, see,” said the driver, jerking left with his ear, to where something shimmered flatly and; eerily in the dark.
Ahead of them the red light of the rear lamp swerved and vanished.
“Hell,” groaned the driver, and working his hands one over the other like a strenuous pianist, he whipped the car round an “S” curve into a straight, round another curve, and caught the distant twinkling of the red light again.
“They’re moving away,” cried the detective, now by Clement’s side.
“They know the ground, hang ’em,” said Clement.
“There’s the outfit,” stabbed the driver. “You look. Don’t wanter pile her up....”
Clement imitated the action he had just seen the driver indulge in. He bent low down so that he could catch faintly the black silhouette of the earth against the fainter darkness of the sky. He saw merely masses of dark shades on shadow—fantastic, indeterminable shades—rocks, no doubt.... Then ... yes, there was the tall, square shoulder of a mine building, the frail fret of derrick against the dark, and the humped mound of slack.
“I see it,” he cried. “That’s the place, for a certainty.”
“Seems so,” growled the driver. He swore deeply. He had lost the tail light. He was laboring round another cruel bend. He straightened out. “Where in creation....” he began, searching for the red light.
“There!” cried the detective.
“There!” cried Clement. “Straight ahead. Why, we’ve got ’em. We’re on top of ’em. We’ve got ’em sure.”
There was a sudden and appalling bump.
“Fer th’ love of Mike....” yelled the driver. He wrenched frantically at the wheel. “We’re off the trail ... off....”
There was a sudden succession of terrific and violent bumps. The car seemed to jump. It thrust forward, sank. Kicked again, buried its nose deep, and threatened to capsize. Then the hind part sank softly and squarely.... All movement ceased.
The all-but-buried headlights, the driver instinctively switched full on, shone on a flat, moist surface that threw back the rays with a curious, livid shine. The driver swore deeply.
“Steve,” he cried to Clement. “Steve, we’re done. We’re knocked. We’re beat.... We’re bogged.”
In the distance the red light dwindled and dwindled, and abruptly was lost.
In the first car Siwash, leaning towards Joe Wandersun, smiled his cold Indian smile. “They’re in it, pard,” he said. “In it up to the lamps. That settles them.”