With a savage upper-cut that
caught the watchman on the point of the jaw and sent him crashing among
the picks and shovels of the mine-mouth tool-room, Judson darted out
into the moonlight. But as yet the fierce race was only fairly begun.
Without stopping to look for a path, the ex-engineer flung himself at
the steep hill-side, running, falling, clambering on hands and knees,
bursting by main strength through the tangled thickets of young pines,
and hurling himself blindly over loose-lying bowlders and the trunks of
fallen trees. When, after what seemed like an eternity of lung-bursting
struggles, he came out upon the bare summit of the ridge, his tongue was
like a dry stick in his mouth, refusing to shape the curses that his
soul was heaping upon the alcohol which had made him a wind-broken,
gasping weakling in the prime of his manhood.
For, after all the agonizing strivings, he was too late. It was a rough
quarter-mile down to the shadowy group of buildings whence the humming
of the dynamo and the quick exhausts of the high-speeded steam-engine
rose on the still night air.
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