Judson knew that the last lap was not in
his trembling muscles or in the thumping heart and the wind-broken
lungs. Moreover, the path, if any there were, was either to the right or
the left of the point to which he had attained; fronting him there was a
steep cliff, trifling enough as to real heights and depths, but an
all-sufficient barrier for a spent runner.
The ex-engineer crawled cautiously to the edge of the barrier cliff,
rubbed the sweat out of his smarting eyes, and peered down into the
half-lighted shadows of the stockaded enclosure. It was not very long
before he made them out--two indistinct figures moving about among the
disused and dilapidated ore sheds clustering at the track end of the old
spur. Now and again a light glowed for an instant and died out, like the
momentary brilliance of a gigantic fire-fly, by which the watcher on the
cliff's summit knew that the two were guiding their movements by the
help of an electric flash-lamp.
What they were doing did not long remain a mystery. Judson heard a
distance-diminished sound, like the grinding of rusty wheels upon iron
rails, and presently a shadowy thing glided out of one of the ore sheds
and took its place upon the track of the old spur.
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