The country over which they had been passing for hours, it seemed, had been flat. At length it became broken up. The hard rock was thrusting its way up through the thin soil, first in little outcrops, then in mounds and bluffs that resembled the ground at Cobalt. The trail, which had gone forward as directly as an arrow, began to twist, worming round the rocky pockets, forever finding the most negotiable way. Then, in the midst of his automatic and quite unsplenetic growls at the tricky steering this new circumstance demanded, the driver said, “Hey, look at that big Swede. Hey, but just you look at him, hitting it up again.”
It was a fact. The car in front of them had abruptly increased its speed. From its steady, but cautious pace, it had suddenly started to run away.
“Have they seen us?” asked Clement.
“Not they,” said the driver. “That’s the explanation.” He pointed ahead of him towards the trail. Even as he pointed the reason for the change of speed became obvious. The car ceased its wild and stormy bumping. They were still pitched about, but the rough trail across country had ceased; they were on a road. As they wound in and out among the rocks they could see the fairly even and rutted surface under their headlights.
“Where are we? What road?” demanded Clement.
“I miss my guess,” said the driver, his eyes fixed warily ahead for the abrupt and surprising twists. “I don’t know more’n you. It’s Nowhere in the middle of Neverwas.”
They ran on, twisting and turning along the crooked, rock-dodging path. Clement’s pulse began to beat with excitement. A made road—that meant a house. A house meant....
The driver said abruptly, his expert eye flashing to the side of the track and back again with a darting glance, “Thought so ... workings.” He pointed with a stabbing finger. “Stuff taken out of there—see. Ugh! ye brute, do ye want to go, prospecting wid yer nose?”
Clement looked to the side of the trail, but saw nothing of the signs of mining which the driver noted at a glance. But he saw and felt the road, saw signs of the presence of man in that, and he recognized that they were coming to the critical point of their ride. He braced himself alertly, looking ahead. His hand went into his pocket, caught at the automatic pistol and held it ready.
“Water, see,” said the driver, jerking left with his ear, to where something shimmered flatly and; eerily in the dark.