“Look out yonder! Somebody’s set the leaves afire! My God! we left the dynamite out there!”
Carfax, who was standing beside the mechanician, wheeled quickly to face the open door. Out beyond the drill derrick a thin line of fire, driven by the freshening west wind and showing orange-colored under the mist-wraiths, was sweeping down upon the clearing. “Show me where you left the stuff!” he snapped at the mechanician, but even as he spoke, a fuse squibbed and the thunder of a terrific explosion shattered the forest silences, the concussion smashing the glass in the small square window, rocking the lightly built tool-house like the heaving of an earthquake, and bombarding it an instant later with a rain of falling débris. The judge, sitting upon the coil of rope, was not thrown down, but the five men who were standing were flung in a heap on the floor.
Tregarvon was the first to regain his feet and to reach the open. The cloud mantlings had been thrust aside for the moment, but the stir was full of gray dust and acrid with the fumes of the explosive. Where the derrick and the new power-plant had stood there was a mass of tangled wreckage, and the burying-ground glade looked as if it had been swept by a tornado. In the wan moonlight Tregarvon caught a glimpse of something moving under the trees beyond the wreck; then the moving object erected itself into the stature of a man.
One glance at the tall, frock-coated figure was enough. With a mad yell of rage, Tregarvon snatched the gun from the judge’s hands and gave chase, calling to the frock-coated man to stand or he would shoot. There was an instant of hesitation, seemingly of indecision; then the man turned and fled. And, as if to favor him, another scudding cloud settled upon the mountain top, burying forest and glade, the tangled wreck and the two runners in its fleecy depths.
Tregarvon raced on for a breath-cutting space; guided solely by the crashing of the fugitive through the brier tangles and dry-leaf beds. Then he began to get his second wind, and again he shouted the command to halt. Since this seemed only to have the effect of hastening the thudding footsteps on ahead, he fired the gun, holding the muzzle high, as he thought and intended, but apparently not high enough, as the dreadful sequence immediately indicated. For, almost exactly coincident with the report of the gun, there was a shriek, the crash of a falling body, and silence.
At this the pursuer came down from the transporting heights of berserk rage with a shock that was sickening. “Oh, good Lord!” he gasped; “I’ve killed him!” Whereupon he flung the offending weapon afar and ran to confirm the horrifying conclusion.
He was still running in the direction from which the cry had come when the curious happening befell. As if the solid earth had been whisked away from beneath his feet he found himself whirling through empty space; falling through unfathomable depths of it, it seemed, before he collided with another world—a world of shocks and coruscating pains, of beatings and bruisings, and presently of grateful forgetfulness.
XXVIII
The Ocoee’s Answer
WHEN Tregarvon recovered consciousness he knew at once what had happened to him. In the blind and hurried search for the body of the man he had presumptively shot he had fallen from the cliff edge; how far was still problematical, but far enough, as a painful roaring in his ears, a tightening agony in his forehead, and a bruised and stiffening ankle sufficiently testified.
His first thought was for his victim. The man might not have been killed outright; in which case he might be even now dying for the lack of timely help. The thought was insupportable and Tregarvon tried to rise. But the ankle, broken or twisted, he could not determine which, gripped him like a fanged wild beast and he fell back with a groan. None the less, in some way he must contrive to bring help. He felt in his pockets for matches. A heap of dry leaves furnished the kindling and a clear flame leaped up, hollowing out a small cavity of yellow light in the misty gloom. At this the fire-lighter saw that he was at the bottom of a deep, water-worn cleft opening back from the outer scarp of the cliff, and at right angles to it; a ravine which was little more than a crevice, save that it was large enough to have trees and shrubs growing in it.