John laughed, “She’s your cousin,” he said, “you said you wanted to follow her and I am following. If you don’t like it you should. I’ve been doing a bit of fancy driving tonight, setting a record, I’ll bet, for this stretch of road. What’s a Rheatian government to us? It was their own fault anyway, for leaving the gate open. We can just say we didn’t see it.”
We seemed to be crawling, then, by contrast to our former speed. We wound around mountains, zig-zagging on the edges of precipices, coming out miles beyond on some horse shoe curve a few hundred feet away as the crow flies. The first grey light of the dawn was just showing it to us. When we had gone through the other way it had been too dark to see. Once behind us, and twice ahead of us, I saw the flash of lights, whether they were car lights or not I could not tell. They might be the signal lights of some frontier guard announcing our approach—or Helena’s.
We had been driving so fast that it seemed we should have overtaken any other car if there was one. I began to doubt that they had taken the Herrovosca road at all, unless they were equalling our speed on some matter of life and death while we were left outlawed between two customs houses, chasing butterflies over deserted and eerie mountain passes.
We came abruptly to a stop. Just between two high rock walls, where the road had been graded steeply, a white barricade had been placed. Our lights picked it up in time to come to a neat stop a foot or two too soon to crash. The brakes shrieked like a dog in torture. I reached for our passports. As well to put up a bluff, anyway. We might get by.
We didn’t.
“Damned frontier guards,” John started, and stopped. Two men in black with black masks over their unshaven faces covered us with hard-boiled modern shotguns, while two others climbed into the car. Then the two with the guns stepped on the running boards on either side, others pulled the barricade off the road far enough for our car to squeeze by, and one of the men poked his gun insinuatingly into John’s face.
“They’re the funniest looking lot of frontier guards I ever saw,” I whispered, uncomfortably.
“They’re bandits, dressed up like this, and a smelly crew, too,” John said, happily, “unless we’re still asleep and dreaming at Castle Waldek.”
I did not resist. There were too many of them to make it feasible. When the gun came away from his face for a moment, John knocked its owner down with his fist, but all they did was tie him up tight with a rope end. I was surprised that they were so gentle. They tied our hands behind us, and bandaged our eyes with our own handkerchiefs. I wondered why men so much in need of baths themselves should have the finesse to use a gentleman’s own handkerchief to tie across his eyes. Obviously someone had told them to do it. I felt happier after I had thought that out.
They pulled us out of the car, felt us over carefully for weapons, and then shoved us into the tonneau on top of all the painting stuff. It was uncomfortable, especially since we could neither see what was in our way, nor move it with our hands tied behind us. John cursed in a low but definite tone. I considered silence a little better policy, and finally wriggled myself into a position where I was almost lying down, and had slipped the handkerchief half off my eyes. I could see out on one side of the car. The stars were still visible, though the sky was beginning to lighten. We were heading south, roughly, I decided, by trying to average up our twistings. South, by south-west. That meant that we were crossing the mountain ridge as we had come, but not by the road, for we were bumping over dirt, and uneven, sloping rock, alternately. Herrovosca would have lain about due south-west, if I remembered my map correctly. Not that a map would be of any appreciable value to us in our present plight. In fact, I judged that it might easily be some little time before we should have any further use for a map. The only consolation to me was the beautiful excuse our capture made for our irregular position between the two customs houses, without benefit of stamp on our passports. That was small enough consolation, however, for the discomfort of a sharp and heavy box end that kept jouncing into my shin. I tried again and again to kick it out of the way, but without budging it.