The White Waterfall

by James Francis Dwyer

Holman gripped One Eye by the neck and shook him roughly. The youngster's temper was up, and it looked as if we had wasted the hours we had spent in capturing the idiot alive, and the time lost in following behind him through the cañon and the crooked passage. And time was precious when we thought of the agony which Edith and Barbara Herndon were suffering.

In his temper Holman forgot that the prisoner was deaf, and he shouted a question at him. "What the devil is wrong?" he screamed. "Damn you, will—"

Maru interrupted with a cry of astonishment. The wall at the end of the passage appeared to slide away, and, standing directly in front of us, his big frame outlined against a fire of brushwood that blazed behind him, was Leith!

Holman gave a yell of rage and sprang forward, and Leith turned and sped into the gloom. In his astonishment at finding himself confronted by the enemy when the stone door had rolled aside, Holman had forgotten that he had a revolver in his possession, and Leith had passed the brushwood fire before I yelled out to the youngster to shoot.

Holman fired immediately, and Leith staggered. For a moment we thought that he was down, but he picked himself up and ran on. I snatched a blazing pine limb from the fire as I rushed by, and with the light flickering upon the walls of the place, we sped madly after the flying figure that was barely discernible when the blazing branch flung a splinter of light into the gloom.

Holman emptied the revolver, but the pounding of Leith's feet that came back to us proved that he was still running. Maru and Kaipi were hallooing far behind, but Holman and I ran side by side, our minds unable to think of anything but the capture of the human tiger in front.

We were gaining on him. We could hear his laboured breathing, and I remembered with a thrill of satisfaction the wound that he had received the night before. It was only a question of time when we would have our fingers on his throat. "Keep it up!" gasped Holman. "We've got him, Verslun! We've got him!"

It looked like it. The red glow from the torch enabled us to catch an occasional glimpse of shoes moving up and down at such a rate that the limbs to which they were attached always remained outside the area that was faintly illuminated. The momentary view of the footgear, together with the maddening plop plop it made upon the rock, raised an insane idea within my brain that we were chasing a pair of bewitched shoes that were enticing us into the very heart of the mountain. The scanty diet and the happenings of the two preceding days had left me light-headed. The race was unreal. I had an idea that the shoes would run on forever, and that every yard they covered took me farther away from Edith Herndon.

The flame of the pine branch went out, and we were left in utter darkness. But the sound of the flying feet still came back to us. At times we were so near that Holman thrust out his hands as he ran, and cursed softly as the sounds seemed to draw away from him.

"I'll have you yet!" he cried. "I'll choke you, you devil!"