The powerful beam of the headlights had suddenly blazed forth. Either feeling that he was safe from Weir’s gun or realizing that he was on the verge of a graver danger, Sorenson had chosen to make the light. He was going at headlong speed; even where they watched, Steele and Janet perceived that,––and only his fear of the peril behind which made him heedless of the difficulties in front could account for that reckless pace.
The light leaped out into the night. Something else too seemed to spring forth within the circle of the glow, dark, sudden, imminent, rushing at the machine. A frantic jerk this way and that of the beam showed the driver’s mad effort to avoid the towering wall of granite. Then a scream rang back to the man and girl before the cabin. Followed instantly a crash, an extinguishment of the light, darkness, silence, and finally a thin quivering flame at the base of the ledge, delicate and blue, like a dancing chimera.
Janet’s hand reached out and closed in Steele Weir’s, and he covered it with his other hand.
“Oh, how terrible!” she gasped. “Did you see? The rock seemed to smite him!”
“Yes.”
“He must be dead.”
“You remain here and I’ll go find out.”
He led her into the cabin and to a stool by the table, where resting her elbows on the board she pressed her hands over her eyes as if to blot out the sight she had just witnessed. After all she had suffered, the climax of this dreadful spectacle left her unnerved, weak, shuddering.
“Don’t stay long,” she whispered. “Come back as quick as you can. This cabin, this whole spot in the mountains, is awful. I can almost feel him hovering over me.”