To this Travenion sighs: "My daughter!"
But Kruger goes on savagely: "I would have shot yer while yer were profanin', if it hadn't been I didn't want to shock her by her seein' yer die. But now, I love yer so well, R. H. Tranyon, I'm goin' to fix ye!"
With this, he takes the case of wine and hurls it to the other end of the incline. There's a crash, and Margaux and Clicquot trickle over the stones of the mine.
Then he cries: "Yer won't need this!" and throwing over the keg of water, it runs to waste upon the earth.
"Neither will ye want pervisions!" and he tosses the old club man's dainties into the sink of the mine at the bottom of the incline, keeping a big buffalo tongue, which he bites and eats, talking after this, with his mouth full, which makes him more hideous and awful, as he jeers: "I ain't had no breakfast—I'm foragin' on the enemy of the Lord."
"My God! What do you mean to do?" gasps Travenion, who has looked on with eyes that are growing bloodshot.
"Cut ye off behind the ears—make a blood atonement of ye! You've been so crafty about this, no one will ever know you're down here to hunt ye up."
Then running up the incline, Lot loads the two cars standing at the surface, with great masses of rock and boulders, fanaticism giving him increased strength. Letting them run down, he unloads them, and once more does the same, unheeding the cries of the man helpless in the level below.
When he has done enough of this, he cuts the cars loose at the surface, and they come crashing down, and block up the incline. Then he comes down again himself and piles the boulders he has already let down, on top of the wrecked cars, blocking Travenion from the outer world.
Noting his purpose, Ralph staggers up, bound as he is, and prays: "Not that! Shoot me—kill me another way! For God's sake, not that!"