He needed no second thought to hurl him forward to the rescue. At a smart pace he ran, halloo’ing loudly, to tell the victims—should they still live—that help was at hand. At his right, extended the wall. At his left, a grove of sugar-maples, sparsely set, climbed a long slope, over the ridge of which the descending sun glowed warmly. Somewhat back from the road, a rough shack which served as a sugar-house for the spring sap-boiling, stood with gaping door, open to all the winds that blew. These things he noted subconsciously, as he ran.
Then, all at once, as he rounded a sharp turn, he drew up with a cry.
“Down the cliff!” he exclaimed. “Knocked the wall clean out, and plunged! Holy Mackinaw, what a smash!”
In a moment he had reached the scene of the catastrophe. His quick eye took in, almost at a glance, the skidding mark of the wheels, the ragged rent in the wall, the broken limbs of trees below.
“Some wreck!” he ejaculated, dropping his stick and throwing off his knapsack. “Hello, Hello, down there!” he loudly hailed, scrambling through the gap.
From below, no answer.
A silence, as of death, broken only by the echo of his own voice, was all that greeted his wild cry.CHAPTER XIV.
THE RESCUE.
Gabriel Armstrong leaped, rather than clambered, through the gap in the wall, and, following the track of devastation through the trees, scrambled down the steep slope that led toward the Hudson.
The forest looked as though a car of Juggernaut had passed that way. Limbs and saplings lay in confusion, larger trees showed long wounds upon their bark, and here and there pieces of metal—a gray mud-guard, a car door, a wind-shield frame, with shattered plate glass still clinging to it—lay scattered on the precipitous declivity. Beside these, hanging to a branch, Gabriel saw a gaily-striped auto robe; and, further down, a heavy, fringed shawl.
Again he shouted, holding to a tree-trunk at the very edge of a cliff of limestone, and peering far down into the abyss where the car had taken its final plunge. Still no answer. But, from below, the heavy smoke still rose. And now, peering more keenly, Armstrong caught sight of the wreck itself.
“There it is, and burning like the pit of Hell!” he exclaimed. “And—what’s that, under it? A man?”
He could not distinctly make out, so thick the foliage was. But it seemed to him that, from under the jumbled wreckage of the blazing machine, something protruded, something that suggested a human form, horribly mangled.
“Here’s where I go down this cliff, whatever happens!” decided Gabriel. And, acting on the instant, he began swinging himself down from tree to bush, from shrub to tuft of grass, clinging wherever handhold or foothold offered, digging his stout boots into every cleft and cranny of the precipice.
The height could not have been less than a hundred and fifty feet. By dint of wonderful strength and agility, and at the momentary risk of falling, himself, to almost certain death, Gabriel descended in less than ten minutes. The last quarter of the distance he practically fell, sliding at a tremendous rate, with boulders and loose earth cascading all about him in a shower.
He landed close by the flaming ruin.
“Lucky this isn’t in the autumn, in the dry season!” thought he, as he approached. “If it were, this whole cliff-side, and the woods beyond, would be a roaring furnace. Some forest-fire, all right, if the woods weren’t wet and full of sap!”
Parting the brush, he made his way as close to the car as the intense heat would let him. The gasoline-tank, he understood, had burst with the shock, and, taking fire, had wrapped the car in an Inferno of unquenchable flame. Now, the woodwork was entirely gone; and of the wheels, as the long machine lay there on its back, only a few blazing spokes were left. The steel chassis and the engine were red-hot, twisted and broken as though a giant hammer had smitten them on some Vulcanic anvil.
“There’s a few thousand dollars gone to the devil!” thought he. But his mind did not dwell on this phase of the disaster. Still he was hoping, against hope, that human life had not been dashed and roasted out, in the wreck. And again he shouted, as he worked his way to the other side of the machine—to the side which, seen from the cliff above, had seemed to show him that inert and mangled body.
All at once he stopped short, shielding his face with his hands, against the blaze.
“Good God!” he exclaimed; and involuntarily took off his cap, there in the presence of death.
That the man was dead, admitted of no question. Pinned under the heavy, glowing mass of metal, his body must already have been roasted to a char. The head could not be seen; but part of one shoulder and one arm protruded, with the coat burned off and the flesh horribly crackled; while, nearer Gabriel, a leg showed, with a regulation chauffeur’s legging, also burned to a crisp.
“Nothing for me to do, here,” said Gabriel aloud. “He’s past all human help, poor chap. I don’t imagine there can be anybody else in this wreck. I haven’t seen anybody, and nobody has answered my shouts. What’s to be done next?”
He pondered a moment, then, looking at the license plate of the machine—its enamel now half cracked off, but the numbers still legible—drew out his note-book and pencil and made a memo of the figures.
“Four-six-two-two, N.Y.,” he read, again verifying his numbers. “That will identify things. And now—the quicker I get back on the road again, and reach a telephone at West Point, the better.”
Accordingly, after a brief search through the bushes near at hand, for any other victim—a search which brought no results—he set to work once more to climb the cliff above him.
The fire, though still raging, was obviously dying down. In half an hour, he knew, it would be dead. There was no use in trying to extinguish it, for gasoline defies water, and no sand was to be had along that rocky river shore.
“Let her burn herself out,” judged Gabriel. “She can’t do any harm, now. The road for mine!”
He found the upward path infinitely more difficult than the downward, and was forced to make a long detour and do some hard climbing that left him spent and sweating, before he again approached the gap in the wall. Pausing here to breathe, a minute or two, he once more peered down at the still-smoking ruin far below. And, as he stood there all at once he thought he heard a sound not very far away to his right.
A sound—a groan, a half-inchoate murmur—a cry!
Instantly his every sense grew keen. Holding his breath he listened intently. Was it a cry? Or had the breeze but swayed one tree limb against another; or did some boatman’s hail, from far across the river, but drift upward to him on the cliff?
“Hello! Hello!” he shouted again. “Anybody there?”
Once more he listened; and now, once more, he heard the sound—this time he knew it was a cry for help!
“Where are you?” shouted he, plunging forward along the steep side of the cliff. “Where?”
No answer, save a groan.
“Coming! Coming!” he hailed loudly. Then, guided as it seemed by instinct, almost as much as by the vague direction of the moaning call, he ploughed his way through brush and briar, on rescue bent.
All at once he stopped short in his tracks, wild-eyed, a stammering exclamation on his lips.
“A woman!” he cried.
True. There, lying as though violently flung, a woman was half-crouched, half-prone behind the roots of a huge maple that leaned out far above a sheer declivity.
He saw torn clothing, through the foliage; a white hand, out-stretched and bleeding; a mass of golden-coppery hair that lay dishevelled on the bed of moss and last autumn’s leaves.
“A woman! Dying?” he thought, with a sudden stab of pity in his heart.
Then, forcing his way along, he reached her, and fell upon his knees at her side.
“Not dead! Not dying! Thank God!” he exclaimed. One glance showed him she would live. Though an ugly gash upon her forehead had bathed her face in blood, and though he knew not but bones were broken, he recognized the fact that she was now ret
urning, fast, to consciousness.
Already she had opened her eyes—wild eyes, understanding nothing—and was staring up at him in dazed, blank terror. Then one hand came up to her face; and, even as he lifted her in both his powerful arms, she began to sob hysterically.
He knew the value of that weeping, and made no attempt to stop it. The overwrought nerves, he understood, must find some outlet. Asking no question, speaking no word—for Gabriel was a man of action, not speech—he gathered her up as though she had been a child. A tall woman, she; almost as tall as he himself, and proportioned like a Venus. Yet to him her weight was nothing.
Sure-footed, now, and bursting through the brambles with fine energy, he carried her to the gap in the wall, up through it, and so to the roadway itself.
“Where—where am I?” the woman cried incoherently. “O—what—where—?”
“You’re all right!” he exclaimed. “Just a little accident, that’s all. Don’t worry! I’ll take care of you. Just keep quiet, now, and don’t think of anything. You’ll be all right, in no time!”
But she still wept and cried out to know where she might be and what had happened. Obviously, Gabriel saw, her reason had not yet fully returned. His first aim must be to bathe her wound, find out what damage had been done, and keeping her quiet, try to get help.
Swiftly he thought. Here he and the woman were, miles from any settlement or house, nearly in the middle of a long stretch of road that skirted the river through dense woods. At any time a motor might come along; and then again, one might not arrive for hours. No dependence could be put on this. There was no telephone for a long distance back; and even had one been near he would not have ventured to leave the girl.
Could he carry her back to Fort Clinton, the last settlement he had passed through? Impossible! No man’s strength could stand such a tremendous task. And even had it been within Gabriel’s means, he would have chosen otherwise. For most of all the girl needed rest and quiet and immediate care. To bear her all that distance in his arms might produce serious, even fatal results.
“No!” he decided. “I must do what I can for her, here and now, and trust to luck to send help in an auto, down this road!”
His next thought was that bandages and wraps would be needed for her cut and to make her a bed. Instantly he remembered the shawl and the big auto-robe that he had seen caught among the trees.
“I must have those at once!” he realized. “When the machine went over the edge, they were thrown out, just as the girl was. A miracle she wasn’t carried down, with the car, and crushed or burned to death down there by the river, with that poor devil of a chauffeur!”
Laying her down in the soft grass along the wall, he ran back to where the wraps were, and, detaching them from the branches, quickly regained the road once more.
“Now for the old sugar-house in the maple-grove,” said he. “Poor shelter, but the best to be had. Thank heaven it’s fair weather, and warm!”
The task was awkward, to carry both the girl and the bulky robes, but Gabriel was equal to it She had by now regained some measure of rationality; and though very pale and shaken, manifested her nerve and courage by no longer weeping or asking questions.
Instead, she lay in his arms, eyes closed, with the blood stiffening on her face; and let him bear her whither he would. She seemed to sense his strength and mastery, his tender care and complete command of the situation. And, like a hurt and tired child, outworn and suffering, she yielded herself, unquestioningly, to his ministrations.
Thus Gabriel, the discharged, blacklisted, outcast rebel and proletarian, bore in his arms of mercy and compassion the only daughter of old Isaac Flint, his enemy, Flint the would-be master of the world.
Thus he bore the woman who had been betrothed to “Tiger” Waldron, unscrupulous and cruel partner in that scheme of dominance and enslavement.
Such was the meeting of this woman and this man. Thus, in his arms, he carried her to the old sugar-house.
And far below, the mighty river gleamed, unheeding the tragedy that had been enacted on its shores, unmindful of the threads of destiny even now being spun by the swift shuttles of Fate.
In the branches, above Gabriel and Catherine, birdsong and golden sunlight seemed to prophesy. But what this message might be, neither the woman nor the man had any thought or dream.
CHAPTER XV.
AN HOUR AND A PARTING.
Arriving at the sugar-house, tired yet strong, Gabriel put the wounded girl down, quickly raked together a few armfuls of dead leaves, in the most sheltered corner of the ramshackle structure, and laid the heavy auto-robe upon this improvised bed. Then he helped his patient to lie down, there, and bade her wait till he got water to wash and dress her cut.
“Don’t worry about anything,” he reassured her. “You’re alive, and that’s the main thing, now. I’ll see you through with this, whatever happens. Just keep calm, and don’t let anything distress you!”
She looked at him with big, anxious eyes—eyes where still the full light of understanding had not yet returned.
“It—it all happened so suddenly!” she managed to articulate. “He was drunk—the chauffeur. The car ran away. Where is it? Where is Herrick—the man?”
“I don’t know,” Gabriel lied promptly and with force. Not for worlds would he have excited her with the truth. “Never you mind about that. Just lie still, now, till I come back!”
Already, among the rusty utensils that had served for the “sugaring-off,” the previous spring, he had routed out a tin pail. He kicked a quantity of leaves in under the sheet-iron open stove, flung some sticks atop of them, and started a little blaze. Warm water, he reflected, would serve better than cold in removing that clotting blood and dressing the hurt.
Then, saying no further word, but filled with admiration for the girl’s pluck, he seized the pail and started for water.
“Nerve?” he said to himself, as he ran down the road toward a little brook he remembered having crossed, a few hundred yards to southward. “Nerve, indeed! Not one complaint about her own injuries! Not a word of lamentation! If this isn’t a thoroughbred, whoever or whatever she is, I never saw one!”
He returned, presently, with the pail nearly full of cold and sparkling water. Ignoring rust, he made her drink as deeply as she would, and then set a dipperful of water on the now hot sheet-iron.
Then, tearing a strip off the shawl, he made ready for his work as an amateur physician.
“Tell me,” said he, kneeling there beside her in the hut which was already beginning to grow dusk, “except for this cut on your forehead, do you feel any injury? Think you’ve got any broken bones? See if you can move your legs and arms, all right.”
She obeyed.
“Nothing broken, I guess,” she answered. “What a miracle! Please leave me, now. I can wash my own hurt. Go—go find Herrick! He needs you worse than I do!”
“No he doesn’t!” blurted Gabriel with such conviction that she understood.
“You mean?” she queried, as he brought the dipper of now tepid water to her side. “He—he’s dead?”
He hesitated to answer.
“Dead! Yes, I understand!” she interpreted his silence. “You needn’t tell me. I know!”
He nodded.
“Yes,” said he. “Your chauffeur has paid the penalty of trying to drive a six-cylinder car with alcohol. Now, think no more of him! Here, let me see how badly you’re cut.”
“Let me sit up, first,” she begged. “I—I’m not hurt enough to be lying here like—like an invalid!”
She tried to rise, but with a strong hand on her shoulder he forced her back. She shuddered, with the horror of the chauffeur’s death strong upon her.
“Please lie still,” he begged. “You’ve had a terrific shock, and have lived through it by a miracle, indeed. You’re wounded and still bleeding. You must be quiet!”
The tone in his voice admitted no argument. Submissive now to his greater strength, this daughter of
wealth and power lay back, closed her tired eyes and let the revolutionist, the proletarian, minister to her.
Dipping the piece of shawl into the warm water, he deftly moistened the dried blood on her brow and cheek, and washed it all away. He cleansed her sullied hair, as well, and laid it back from the wound.
“Tell me if I hurt you, now,” he bade, gently as a woman. “I’ve got to wash the cut itself.”
She answered nothing, but lay quite still. And so, hardly wincing, she let him lave the jagged wound that stretched from her right temple up into the first tendrils of the glorious red-gold hair.
“H’m!” thought Gabriel, as he now observed the cut with close attention. “I’m afraid there’ll have to be some stitches taken here!” But of this he said nothing. All he told her was: “Nothing to worry over. You’ll be as good as new in a few days. As a miracle, it’s some miracle!”
Having completed the cleansing of the cut, he fetched his knapsack and produced a clean handkerchief, which he folded and laid over the wound. This pad he secured in place by a long bandage cut from the edge of the shawl and tied securely round her shapely head.
“There,” said he, surveying his improvisation with considerable satisfaction. “Now you’ll do, till we can undertake the next thing. Sorry I haven’t any brandy to give you, or anything of that sort. The fact is, I don’t use it, and have none with me. How do you feel, now?”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him with the ghost of a smile on her pale lips.
“Oh, much, much better, thank you!” she answered. “I don’t need any brandy. I’m—awfully strong, really. In a little while I’ll be all right. Just give me a little more water, and—and tell me—who are you?”
“Who am I?” he queried, holding up her head while she drank from the tin cup he had now taken from his knapsack. “I? Oh, just an out-of-work. Nobody of any interest to you!”
A certain tinge of bitterness crept into his voice. In health, he knew, a woman of this class would not suffer him even to touch her hand.
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