"Dead or alive was right," said Burgess, jumping from his wheel and examining the bodies in the road. "I wonder what that fellow was up to. And where is the girl?"
"I saw her and one of the men make into the park there," said Blount.
"You take charge here and I'll go after them."
As he moved into the thicket in the direction Pauline had taken young Blount's attention was attracted by a new commotion. The park was on the crest of a steep cliff overlooking the railroad tracks and from the tracks came a riot of voices. Blount forced his way through the wood to a viewpoint from the cliff. Below him a score of men were moving rapidly along the tracks in wide, open order, evidently bent on some sort of a hunt.
"The circus men," said Blount to himself. "An animal must have got out. This is certainly some day for business."
He turned back to the work in hand.
Pauline, spurred by terror as she realized that Wrentz was again upon her trail, had sped like a wild thing through the park paths. She could hear the heavy footsteps of her pursuer close behind. She could hear also a shouting from afar off. She made toward the shouting— the sound of any voice but the voices of the inhuman men who had planned her death was welcome to her ears.
She came out upon the cliff where it sloped steeply to the railroad yards, but not too steeply to prevent her descending. From her position, the lines of freight cars cut off from her vision the strange group of hunters who were shouting. Running, stumbling, creeping, clutching at small bushes, she scrambled down the cliff.
"Stop and come back!" she heard a menacing voice behind her. She sped on the faster.
A line of high bushes fringed the bottom of the cliff. Between the bushes and the first rails ran a ditch. Sheltered from all view from above, Pauline dragged herself along this ditch, seeking a hiding place. She knew her strength was almost gone. She was in terror of fainting. If she could hide somewhere and rest—
A single empty freight car stood on the outer track a hundred yards away. Its open door offered the only means of concealment that she had. She believed that the bushes were high enough still to shield her while she climbed into the car.