Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1914-Jan 1915)

54 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE he had the money. Rosy should walk like other girls. He — oh, what did it matter about the fathers if their children were strong and happy ? He jerked out his brass watch frantically. Twenty-five minutes more ! Well, here he was at home. He would not think of the other — the splintered mass in the ravine; the shrieks and blood and flames. Rosy should have her two hundred and fifty dollars. "Rosy— Rosy-gal." Where was she ? A sudden fantastic thought seized him. He sprang up the rotting steps, rushed like a wind thru the house, calling her, wringing his hands, muttering broken words of reassurance aloud. Impossible ! No, no! she was hiding to tease him! "Rosy! Rosy!" His subconscious mind whispered to him a teasing, vaguely recalled phrase from yesterday: "The new train — can I wide in it?" Suddenly he stopped, very still. His face hardened. "Yes," he said aloud, slowly, "she is on that train." He knew it. There was no room for lying hope or lying doubt. There was, too, a beautiful fitness about it that almost pleased him. For an instant the fact was too big to have any significance to him, beyond its being a fact. One cannot realize nor picture the end of the world in a moment. Then the tick of the clock on the mantel-shelf caught his dulled senses. In twenty minutes he would be a murderer — Rosy 's murderer The agreeably corpulent gentleman, lolling on the dove-colored cushions of his motor at the edge of the crowd that had gathered to see the new train off, turned as white as a beefy cast of countenance would permit as he recognized the significance of the chill ring against his forehead. He turned cautiously, to behold the disquieting spectacle of a maniac, in laborer's clothes, clambering into the car beside him. "Shut your lying mouth," said Jim, fiercely, "or I'll blow you to the place where you belong. An' you, there in front, drive along the river road like hell!" The car leaped ahead, under the potent argument of the pistol. It cut the sharp, autumn air like a knife, riding in the trough of the gusts. Pine particles of rock and gravel stung their cheeks like vicious insects, leaving beads of blood. Jim sat tensely forward on the edge of the seat, as tho urging the car on by his will. His fiugers clutched the pistol with a bloodless grip. Only once did he speak. Then, with a snarl, he turned to dash the tiny roll of bloodmoney into the smug, ludicrously alarmed face beside him. " I 'd like to choke you with it, ' ' he gasped, in intolerable white fury. "Curse you! Shut up, I say, or I'll fill you full of holes." He strained his ears for the sound of a train. Had it passed them ? Was he already Cain, with precious blood on his hands % Only the shrill whistle of cloven air. Only the pant of the motor gasping its iron lungs out beneath. He pictured what the next turn would show him. God! the gnawing flames; the death-cries; Rosy crushed and dead; Rosy alive and imprisoned; Rosy bleeding, cut with glass, broken ' ' Faster, d — n you ! ' ' "There (tint any such thing as faster, ' ' muttered the driver, eyes desperate on the dizzy roadway. "We're goin' faster than the car will go now ! ' ' A sudden twist in the road ; a sudden hot, roaring breath on their faces. The engine had almost grazed the hindermost tire. "On — faster!" shrieked Jim, in a flare of joy. They were ahead now! There were still several miles of life left to Rosy. The rest in the doomed train were as nothing to Jim Peterson, father. He rose to his feet in the careening motor, searching the wayside. The railroad embankment rose steeply above them. Behind — such a cruelly short distance behind — the new train came on evenly, swiftly over the smooth, new rails. "Stop— now!"