CHAPTER XXIX
THE DISPUTED TRAIL
McKinnon kept slowing the car down, at the repeated warning of Alicia, until they did nothing more than creep along the rails. No lights were to be seen now, and the heavy foliage on either side of the track left them in what was almost an unbroken tunnel of darkness.
So McKinnon leaned out over the side of the slowly moving car, waiting for the telltale chug of the wheels against the metal of the switch-points. They groped their way on for a quarter of a mile at this snail's pace before this telltale jolt told them the wheel-flanges had struck and swerved against the "points." The switch was set for the left-hand track, so they had to reverse and back away again, coming to a standstill some ten or twelve paces east of the switch-stand target. Then McKinnon went forward to reconnoitre, leaving the girl, with the revolver, to guard the car.
He made two discoveries as he crept hurriedly about the track in the darkness. The first was that the switch was locked. The closed padlock resisted his fiercest tugs and wrenches. He had to compel himself to calmness and demand of his jaded intelligence some more adequate means of attack.
He returned to the car, after a moment of thought, and groped about until he found one of the army-rifles lying between the cartridge-boxes. Then he felt his way back to the switch, and worked his gun-end carefully in through the lock-chain. It did not take him long, using his carbine-barrel as a crowbar, to pry and twist the lever free.
His second discovery was a more alarming one. Standing on the Guariqui track, blocking his way, was a flat-car. This car was piled high with roughly hewn sticks of logwood. To push any such dead weight as this ahead of them to Guariqui was out of the question. He knew it would have to be hauled back and sidetracked on the rails to the left. Whether or not it was beyond the strength of his motor only an actual test could tell.
He found a chain binding the logwood-pile together, and after a few minutes of hard work this chain was securely attached to his car-axle and hooked over the coupling-pin of the flat-car.
But try as he might, the obstacle was not to be removed. The loaded car refused to stir. One of its wheels, pocketed in a half-inch depression caused by a flattened rail-end, held it anchored to the spot. His motor, sulking and back-firing under the unnatural strain, was not strong enough for the task. And he was sorely afraid of injuring his engine and finding himself broken down and helpless on the very outskirts of De Brigard's lines. He saw that there was nothing to do but unload the flat-car where it stood.
Alicia would have helped him at that slow and dreary labour, but he pointed out to her the necessity of standing on guard while he worked. The rough-hewn sticks of logwood seemed heavy beyond belief. Some of them, which he could not lift, he had to work slowly outward and let fall from the side of the car. He also had to make sure that every log and stick fell clear of the track.
His muscles ached, his fingers seemed with out joints, his strength was gone. Twice he had to resort to heavy drafts from his brandy-flask.
But he worked on, doggedly, sullenly, arguing with himself that he ought to be grateful that he was gaining his end without being discovered, picturing what such labour would be under the fire of a dozen half-breed sharp-shooters at short range. Then he tried to console himself with the thought that his gasoline had held out, that another seven-mile dash would see them pounding their way into Guariqui. And once in Guariqui was safety, and rest, and sleep—above all things, sleep. There would first be good hot coffee, in plenty, and food. And then he would be given a bed somewhere. The thought of that bed seemed the most consoling of all. It suggested a Nirodha of utter indifference after a night of utter anguish; it grew to symbolise an utter Nirvana of rest for his over-wearied body.
But a new fear suddenly stabbed through him as he stooped and laboured so doggedly over his lumbering sticks of logwood. Would daylight come before they were on their way again? Were they to be caught and trapped, after all, by the rising sun?
His watch had run down; in the excitement of the last twenty hours he had neglected to wind it. All sense of time had long since passed from him.
He turned and looked up at the sky. It seemed to him that the great velvet dome studded with silver star-points was less opaque, was more luminous, than it had been. The eastern horizon was shut off from him by a wall of heavy foliage; he could see no telltale line of breaking light. But it seemed to him that the darkness about him was waning, merging into a gray and ghostlike translucence. Somewhere out of the distance, as he looked, came the sound of a rooster crowing.
There was something incongruous in the trivial everydayness of that casual cock-crow. Yet this ludicrously commonplace sound sent a tingle of terror through him. It caused him to turn back to his ragged and ponderous slabs of logwood, lifting and tearing at them until blood dripped from his bruised finger-ends and his head swam as with a vertigo.
He leaped back, suddenly, with a galvanic start, as though the log at which he clutched had been a power-circuit. For close beside him stood the figure of Alicia, ghost-like in the uncertain grayness about them.
"The light's coming," she warned him. "I must help you."
"No—no," he cried, knowing such work was beyond her strength, "you must go back to the car! For God's sake, guard the car!"
"But you can't do it—you can't keep this up!" she cried, in pitying protest.
"Go back to the car ..... this is my work ..... and I'm going to finish it!"
The maddening thought that a new enemy, this relentless enemy of light, was on his heels, turned him back to his work, frenziedly, until his heart pounded like a trip-hammer under his aching breast-bone, and his breath, in that rarefied atmosphere, came with short, painful gasps.
He had to resort to his brandy-flask before he could reach the car again. There he rested for a precious minute or two, explaining to Alicia that he would pry against the empty flat-car's wheel with a logwood stick, while she hauled and tugged at its lower end with the reversed motor.
It was perilous work, calling for the utmost caution lest one fault of judgment undo all his labour. It was a moment when everything hung in the balance, when one grain of ill-luck would send the beam swinging up against them. But an inarticulate little cry burst from him as he saw the black mass slowly yield, and then move, inch by languid inch. He heard the grind of the rusty wheel-flanges against the switch-points, and knew that he had won.
Then the operation was repeated, when once the switch had been cleared and the lever thrown over, and again the stubborn flat-car was pried and pushed into motion. When it came to a standstill, it was left resting well off to the left of the switch, with the road to Guariqui once more open.