"Bring a lamp out to my car, so I can fix my tire." With the girl holding the light by his side the engineer worked with concentrated energy in stripping the wheel, in inserting a new tube, replacing the tire and pumping it up. The thin drizzle glistened on his face, but for all that it was none the less determined, stern. "You need not be afraid for yourself; no one but us knows you were there," he said to her, climbing into his machine. "Nor for Miss Janet, either. I'll bring her home safely. When Dr. Hosmer returns, tell him everything. Also ask him to await our coming. Be sure and say to him that I'll bring her home unharmed and that I advise silence in regard to the matter until I have talked with him. You will remain quiet, of course. This isn't a thing to be gossiped about." "No, señor." Away the automobile shot under the impulsion of the gas. Minutes, golden minutes, had been wasted in taking up the pursuit because of his going to Martinez' office and because of the flat tire. Sorenson now would be miles away with his prisoner. Sweeping out of town with the car's headlights illuminating the road, Steele Weir blessed the drizzling mist that dampened the dust so as to leave a tire's imprint. Almost at once he picked up the track, for not more than twenty or twenty-five minutes had elapsed since Sorenson's flight and not even a horseman had since been over the way. Though he knew it not, the interval of time had been reduced by the stop made by the first machine, a mile or so out of town, when the abductor removed the blanket from Janet Hosmer's head to announce his evil scheme. From the main road leading to Bowenville Weir saw the car's trail turn aside into a mesa track pointing obliquely for Terry Creek canyon; and he suspected that Sorenson was making a long drive northward, skirting the mountain range and working away from the railroad-tapped region. Once he thought he caught a flash of light far ahead of him, but knew this was an illusion. Through this rainy darkness no car's beam, however powerful, would show half a mile. The mist beat against his face in a steady stream as he rushed forward in the night, his eyes immovable on the wet twin tire-marks stamped on the road, his iron grip on the wheel, his ears filled with the steady hum of the engine. If Sorenson had driven fast, Steele Weir drove faster. At Terry Creek he plunged down the bank, across the water and up on the other side without a change of gears, rocking and lurching. Once on the smooth trail again the car seemed to stretch itself like a greyhound for the race northward. But on a sudden he brought the automobile to an abrupt halt. The surface of the road was undisturbed; nothing had passed here.