“Ed, you would never do a thing like that,” she pleaded. “You’re just trying to scare me with a joke. Be a good fellow and untie my hands and take me home.”
“No joke about this; straight business. I told you you should marry me–––”
“You’re drunk or mad!” she burst out, terrified.
“Neither; perfectly calm. But I’m not the fellow to be tossed over at a whim. I’m holding you to your word, that’s all. You’ll change your mind back as it 152 was by to-morrow; you’ll be crazy to have me as a husband then. I won’t have to tie your hands and feet to keep you at my side when we come riding home to go to the minister’s. Now we’ve had our little talk and understand each other; and it’s beginning to drizzle. Time to start for our little cabin. The less fuss you make, the pleasanter it will be for both of us.”
He set the gears and the car started forward once more. A sensation of being under the paws of a beast, odious and fetid, savage and pitiless, overwhelmed her. That this was no trick of a moment but a calculated scheme to abase and possess her she now realized with a sort of dull horror. And on top of all he was, despite his denial, partly drunk.
Through the terror of her situation two thoughts now continued to course like fiery threads––one a hope, one a purpose. The former rested on Juanita, whom in his inflamed ferocity of intention, the man seemed to have forgotten––on Juanita and Steele Weir, “Cold Steel” Weir; and this failing, there remained the latter, a set idea to kill herself before this brute at her side worked his will. Somehow she could and would kill herself. Somehow she would find the means to free her hands and the instrument to pierce her heart.
Sorenson had switched on his lights. He drove the car through the damp darkness at headlong speed along the trail that leaped from the gloom to meet them and vanished behind. At the end of a quarter of an hour he swung into a canyon; and Janet perceived they were ascending Terry Creek. He stopped the car anew.
“I’ll just take no chances with you,” he exclaimed. “We have to pass your friends, the Johnsons, you know. Had to take my stuff up here in the middle of the night––up one night and back the next––and mighty still too, 153 so that they wouldn’t suspicion I was fixing a little bower for you.”
He bound a cloth over her mouth and again flung the blanket over her head. Janet struggled fiercely for a moment, but finally sank back choking and half in a faint. She was barely conscious of the car’s climbing again. Though when passing the ranch house the man drove with every care for silence, she was not aware of the fact. Her breath, mind, soul, were stifled. She seemed transfixed in a hideous nightmare.
At length her lips and head were released. But her hands and feet were numb. Still feeling as if she were in some dreadful dream she saw the beam of the headlights picking out the winding trail, flashing on trees by the wayside, shining on wet rocks, heard the chatter of the creek over stones and the labor of the engine.