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 returning, 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.
