he machine
sloughing dangerously as now and again its sheer weight forced it
forward at dangerous speeds until lesser levels could be reached and
the hold of the brake bands accomplish their purpose again. Down and
down, the miles slipping away with far greater speed than even Barry
realized, until at last--

He grasped desperately for the emergency brake and gripped tight upon
it, steering with one hand. For five minutes there had come the strong
odor of burning rubber; the strain had been too great, the foot-brake
linings were gone; everything depended upon the emergency now! And
almost with the first strain--

Careening, the car seemed to leap beneath him, a maddened, crazed
thing, tired of the hills, tired of the turmoil and strain of hours of
fighting, racing with all the speed that gravity could thrust upon it
for the bottom of the Pass. The brakes were gone, the emergency had
not even lasted through the first hill. Barry Houston was now a
prisoner of speed,--cramped in the seat of a runaway car, clutching
tight at the wheel, leaning, white, tense-faced, out into the snow, as
he struggled to negotiate the turns, to hold the great piece of runaway
machinery to the crusted road and check its speed from time to time in
the snowbanks.

A mile more--halted at intervals by the very thing which an hour or so
before Barry Houston had come almost to hate, the tight-packed banks of
snow--then came a new emergency. One chance was left, and Barry took
it,--the "burring" of the gears in lieu of a brake. The snow was
fading now, the air was warmer; a mile or so more and he would be safe
from that threat which had driven him down from the mountain
peaks,--the possibility of death from exposure, had he, in his light
clothing, attempted to spend the night in the open. If the burred
gears could only hold the car for a mile or so more--

But a sudden, snapping crackle ended his hope. The gears had meshed,
and meshing, had broken. Again a wild, careening thing, with no snow
banks to break the rush, the car was speeding down the steepest of the
grades like a human thing determined upon self-destruction.

A skidding curve, then a straightaway, while Barry clung to the wheel
with fingers that were white with the tightness of their grip. A
second turn, while a wheel hung over the edge, a third and--

The awful, suspended agony of space. A cry. A crash and a dull,
twisting moment of deadened Suffering. After that--bla