“Up into the timber and to a ‘park.’ Used to be an 163 old wood road. Sheepmen sometimes use it to take their wagons up above; sometimes cattle outfits too while on round-ups.”
“Could an auto go ahead on it?”
“Yes, I guess so. By hard driving.”
“Then he’s up there.”
Weir ran back to his car, jumped in.
“Let me go with you,” Johnson shouted after him.
“No, I can handle the fellow,” the engineer answered. And again his machine started on. “How long ago was it that you heard him, Mary?” was his parting question.
“’Bout fifteen minutes ago,” she cried.
Fifteen minutes! But the girl’s reckoning might be vague, and “fifteen” minutes be half an hour. At any rate, with the road ascending among the peaks Sorenson’s speed would be greatly diminished. The incline would be against him, the uneven twisting rain-washed trail would require careful driving, the rain would hamper his sight. Yet the fellow he pursued could not be more than three or four miles ahead at most.
On and on Weir pressed. The mist thickened; black wet tree trunks loomed before him like ghosts and sank out of view again; the road wound along the stream among rocks and bushes and over hillocks with all the difficult sinuosity of a serpent’s track; in his ears persisted the chuckling talk of the creek, flowing in darkness except when lighted by his car’s lamps as the machine plunged through a ford, as became more and more frequent with the ascent and the narrowing of the canyon.