In the Shadow of the Hills

by George C. Shedd

Five miles, ten miles, fifteen miles he must have come since leaving the ranch house. His car now was high in the mountain range, running on low gear, the engine working hard in the thin air and against the steep grade. 164 He was not making more than five miles an hour, he judged, at this moment. The radiator was boiling and steaming like a cauldron. But he might be sure that if his travel was slow, Sorenson’s was no better; the road was the same for the pursued as for the pursuer.

At the end of another half hour he came around a ledge of rock, where the creek flowed some fifty feet below and the granite wall allowed just room to pass in a hair-pin turn. There a light gleamed before him like a beacon, a dim gleam of a window. It was perhaps a hundred yards distant. It marked the end of the trail, the end of the search.

Here was Janet Hosmer!

And he had come in time. They could not have been here long, for Sorenson’s start had not been sufficient for that; the scoundrel had not yet recovered his breath from his hard drive, so to speak. He probably would imagine himself safe and so be in no haste to consummate his vile plan of enjoying his helpless victim.

Rage that until now had been lying cold and implacable in Steele Weir’s breast began to flame in his veins and brain. He drove his car past the rock and off the trail upon an open grassy space, very carefully, very quietly. Next he stopped the engine and put out the lights, then he got out, felt his gun in its holster and gazed ahead for an instant.

A form had passed and repassed before the window––Sorenson’s figure, of course. Brute, coward, degenerate he was, and to be dealt with as such. Not only as such, indeed, but as a wretch who had dared to touch Janet Hosmer against her will, to drag her from her home to this lonely spot by violence for his own bestial purposes.

The blood seemed like to burst Steele Weir’s heart. This sweet, honest, kind-souled, noble girl! Janet 165 Hosmer, so bright-eyed and pure! She, who had suffered this man’s hate to save Martinez’ document, who had dared peril to help him, Weir! All the hunger of heart of years, and all the stifled affection, now went out to her. He loved her; the veil was rent from his mind and he realized the fact indisputably––he loved Janet Hosmer. And the great creature of an Ed Sorenson had dared to seize her with brutal hands!

Weir broke into a run. By instinct he kept the trail, though once or twice stumbling and once barely missing a collision with a tree. When he reached the cabin, he dropped to a walk and crept to the window, which was without glass or frame, open to the night. Peering in he perceived Sorenson at the table reading a document, and as he watched he had no need to be told this was the paper that so vitally concerned himself.

At last Sorenson got to his feet, shaking his hand at Janet Hosmer who sat against the cabin wall and beginning to speak. Weir listened for a little. Then he stole along the log house to find the door.

At last his finger touched the latch. He lifted it soundlessly, as silently pushed the door ajar until there was space for him to slip in. This he did. His mouth was shut hard, his eyes watchful, his right hand was closed about the butt of his revolver still resting in the holster.