The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 45
CHAPTER XLV
The Last Warning—and Flight
IN THE clear light of dawn four strangers straggled into Mesquite town—two weary and haggard men, two footsore and bedraggled women. One of these last was dressed in a suit of man's clothing, much the worse for wear. The other members of the party, one and all, wore the look of people who have escaped the jaws of death by the narrowest of imaginable squeaks. Their clothing, of the most rough-and-ready description though it was, had evidently at some quite recent time been sopping wet, then rough dried on its wearers; every garment was warped out of shape and caked with mud and dust. Even their hands and faces were none too clean; abortive efforts had evidently been made to erase some of the grime at a mountain stream, but lacking soap and towels the outcome had not been altogether happy.
At sight of the Mountain House—Mesquite's one carvanserai—the party betrayed slight symptoms of a more cheerful spirit: rejoicing in its promise of food and drink, and beds withal wherein to sleep, the four quickened their steps.
But of a sudden one of the women—she who wore the garments of her sex—paused, uttered a low cry athrill with terror, and clutching the arm of the man nearest her, pointed down to the card that stared up from the dust at her feet.
It was a Trey of Hearts. …
"Oh, what can it mean?" Rose—for it was she—whispered brokenly, clinging to her lover's arm. "Surely you don't think. … Surely it must be accidental. … Surely it can't mean"
"I'm afraid it does," Alan Law responded gravely, eying the front of the Mountain House. "Our luck holds inconsistently—that's all. It wouldn't be us if we didn't pick out the one place where Marrophat and Jimmy chose to stop overnight. Fortunately, it's early; I doubt they're up. With half a show we ought to be able to find some way of putting a good distance between us and this town before they waken. … Tom!"
But Mr. Barcus was already at his elbow, in thorough sympathy of Alan's interpretation of the significance to be attached to the card that trembled in Rose's hand.
"Sharp's the word!" he agreed. "And there's a motor-car over there, in front of the blacksmith's. Probably we can hire her"
"Trine's car!" Alan ejaculated, recognizing the automobile at a glance. "Then he's here, as well!"
"Looks like it," Barcus admitted. "But so much the better. We'll just naturally take the darn thing off his hands, and I'll bet there isn't another car within fifty miles! We'll be well out of these mountains before he finds anything to chase us with."
But his confidence was demonstrated to be premature by the discovery, which rewarded the first cursory examination, that the car was very thoroughly out of commission.
Two minutes later, however, their earnest inquiries elicited the fact that Mesquite itself boasted two motor-cycles whose owners were not indifferent to a chance to sell them second-hand at a considerable advance on the retail list price of the machines when new.
And thus it was that, within ten minutes from Rose's discovery of that chance-flung warning in the dust, the party was again in rapid motion.
Mr. Barcus was the first to get under way, with Judith Trine occupying the extra seat over the rear wheel. And though Alan was little slower, the staccato chatter of the other motor had diminished to a merely steady drumming in the distance before the second machine began to move.
Now civilization has produced no noises more alarming and irritating than the chant of the steam riveter and the road-song of the motor-cycle.
Disturbed by the departure of the machine bearing Barcus and Judith, Seneca Trine craned his neck and managed to glimpse through his window the second motor-cycle as it started, Alan steering. Rose in the seat behind.
And something subtly pyschological drew the gaze of his daughter toward her father's window. As they chugged past the Mountain House Alan was conscious of a startled movement behind him and a convulsive tightening of the hands that clutched his belt. Instinctively he applied all the power that the motor could generate.
Sixty seconds later a flaunting banner of dust was all that remained to remind Mesquite that Romance had passed that way—that, and a series of passionate screams emanating from the bedchamber of Seneca Trine, where the cripple lay possessed by seven devils of insensate rage.
Thus was his pleasure in the dawning of a new day ruined by the discovery that those whom he had thought to be safely entombed in the lowermost level of a flooded mine, twenty miles distant, were alive and sound and active enough to make yet another effort toward their salvation.
His screams brought attendance; but it was some time before his demands could be met and Marrophat and Jimmy roused from their heavy slumbers in adjoining chambers; and half an hour elapsed before the chauffeur, roused from his own well-earned rest, succeeded in convincing the pair that pursuit with the motor-car was altogether out of the question until he had spent at least half the day overhauling the motor.
But the devil takes care of his own; within another half hour luck brought a casual automobile to Mesquite—a two-seated, high-power racing machine, driven by two irresponsible wayfarers who proved only too susceptible to Marrophat's offer of double the cost of the car—f. o. b. Detroit—for its immediate surrender.
The two piled out promptly, Marrophat and Jimmy jumped in, and Trine from his bedroom window sped them with a blast of blasphemy which was destined to keep his memory green in Mesquite for many a year after he had been consigned to his grave. …
It must have been an hour later when Alan looked back and discovered, several miles distant on the far-flung windings of the mountain road, a small crimson shape that ran like a mad thing tirelessly pursued by a cloud of tawny dust.
A motor-car of uncommon road-devouring quality, it might or might not contain Marrophat and Jimmy, once more in pursuit. Bitter experience had long since taught Alan to take no chances.
Though it was his life that they sought no later than yesterday, they had proved that if Rose were with Alan they would include her ruthlessly in whatsoever scheme they might contemplate for his personal extermination. Nor would Tom Barcus be exempt, though Judith might be, in view of Marrophat's infatuation for the girl.
These two were far ahead and must somehow be overtaken and warned—no easy matter, since the machine which bore them was faster than Alan's, just as the racing automobile was faster than either. From its jog-trot the cycle swept into its greatest speed: ventre-à-terre, ears back, tail a-stream, it roared down the road at such speed as tore the very breath from the lips of those whom it carried.
Alan kept his gaze steadfast to the road, for at such frightful speed as they were now making the slightest obstruction was fraught with direst peril. Now on one hand, now on the other, now on both, the hillsides fell away in such steep declivities as almost to deserve the name of cliffs, as the road wound its serpentine way through the heart of these desolate, silent mountains.
Then catastrophe befell. …
Round the swelling bosom of a wooded mountain-side the motor-cycle swept like a hunted hare, and without the least warning came upon Barcus and Judith, dismounted, Barcus bending over his cycle and tinkering with its motor. For an instant collision seemed unavoidable. Barcus and Judith and the motor-cycle occupied most of the width of the road; there was little room between them and the declivity, less between them and the forest. To try to pass them on the latter side would be only to dash his brains out against the trees; while to make the attempt on the outside would be to risk leaving the road altogether and dashing off into space. …
It was impossible to stop the cycle. In desperation Alan chose the outside of the road; and for the space of a single heartbeat thought that he might possibly make it, but with the next realized that he would not—seeing the front wheel swing off over the lip of the slope.
At this he acted sharply and upon sheer instinct. As the cycle left the road altogether he risked a broken knee by releasing his grasp of the handle-bars and straightening out his leg and driving it down forcibly against the road bed. The effect of this was to lift him bodily from the saddle; the machine shot from beneath him like some strange projectile hurled from the bore of a great gun, and Rose crashed against him in the same fraction of a second.
Headlong they plunged as one down the hillside, struck its shelving surface a good twenty feet from the brink of the road, and, flying apart, tumbled their separate ways down the remainder of the drop and into the friendly shelter of the underbrush.
Something nearly miraculous saved them whole. Beyond a few scratches and bruises and a severe shaking up, they escaped unharmed. And they were picking themselves up and recollecting their scattered wits when, with impetus no less terrific than their own had been, the pursuing motor-car swung round the bend and hurled itself directly at the two who remained upon the road above.