“Yes––look out!”
Janet’s words, half a gasp, half a shriek, gave warning of Sorenson’s movement, though none was needed. While apparently neglecting to watch the other, Weir had kept the man sharp in the corner of his eye. The motion with which his hand darted to his hip and up again was a single lightning-like sweep; and his weapon covered his enemy before the latter’s hand so much as got his revolver in grasp.
“Drop it; drop it on the floor!” the engineer ordered. The gun clattered on the rough-hewn logs. “Now put your hands up and turn your back this way.” Sorenson obeyed, not without his eyes speaking the disappointed wrath and hatred his tongue dared not utter. “I should have allowed you to make a full draw and then killed you,” Steele Weir went on. “That would have been the simplest way to settle your case. Only I don’t like to kill bunglers, even when they deserve it.”
He re-sheathed his own gun and strode forward, picking up the one on the floor––a black, ugly-looking automatic. This he dropped into a coat pocket.
“Now face about, you cur,” he commanded. “I want a good look at a man––no, I’ll not call you a man––at a low-lived imitation of a man who is such a sneaking, dirty beast that all he can do is to trap and tie up a helpless girl. I don’t know yet just what I shall do with you, but I know what I ought to do––I ought to choke the miserable life out of you! You’re not fit to live. You soil the earth and pollute the air. But you’re of the same treacherous, underhanded, scoundrelly breed as your father, same yellow flesh and blood, same crooked mind and heart, same sort of poisonous snake, and since you get it all from him I suppose it can’t be helped. Nor changed, except by killing and burying you. One thing is sure, when I’m done you won’t be trying any more deals like this. Bah, you slimy reptile, you belong in a cess-pool!”
Under Steele Weir’s biting speech Sorenson’s face went red and pale by turns. His lips twitched and worked, moving his mustache in little angry lifts, while he breathed with short spasmodic intakes.
“First, you’re after Mexican girls,” Weir went on mercilessly. “Then Mary Johnson, whom I pulled out 169 of your vile fingers. And now it’s––” The engineer’s fist arose suddenly above the other’s head. “Why, I ought to drop you dead in your tracks for so much as looking at Janet Hosmer! Why don’t you fight? Why don’t you give me a chance, you cowardly girl-robber? Haven’t you a spark of––well, you haven’t, I see. I’ll just tie you up and later figure out some way to make you suffer for this night’s work.” And with a gesture of disgust Weir turned away.
It was the moment Sorenson had been waiting for. As the engineer’s back came about, exposed in one instant of carelessness, the man struck Weir full force on the neck, sending him staggering. Then Sorenson leaped for the doorway.
Janet screamed. Weir recovered himself and whirled around, whipping forth his revolver and firing two shots. But the bullets only buried themselves in the door slammed shut after the escaping prisoner.