The Air Trust Part 15

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 pa.s.sed 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-s.h.i.+eld frame, with shattered plate gla.s.s 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 h.e.l.l!" 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 gra.s.s, 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 cha.s.sis 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, s.h.i.+elding his face with his hands, against the blaze.

"Good G.o.d!" 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 ma.s.s 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 n.o.body 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 sh.o.r.e.

"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?

"h.e.l.lo! _h.e.l.lo_!" 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-p.r.o.ne 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 ma.s.s 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 G.o.d!" 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 pa.s.sed 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!"