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Дата написания1970-01-01
Язык книгиen
Возрастное ограничение12+
Жанры
зарубежная классика

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Above, all was snow. In those northward valleys winter loiters late, and spring comes but tardily. Once among the firn, Franz could give them the slip, he felt sure; he could lurk behind rocks, or hide among the klamms, and let the baffled pursuers pass by unnoticing. But no – but no – ach, Gott! the footprints! With a sudden revulsion he realised his error. Those years in milder climates had made him forget for a moment the hopelessness of escaping if once he reached the snow-line. Appalled and dismayed, he turned and hesitated. Then he dashed off at an angle, horizontally along the hill, at the same general level, so as to avoid the snow-covered glaciers. That one false move lost him. His pursuers, seeing him double, headed forward diagonally across the third side of the triangle, and gained on him visibly. Franz was blown and panting. His heart throbbed hard; he had overtaxed it sadly in that first wild burst up the ramping hillside. Again he paused, and looked back. The hopelessness and futility of the whole thing broke in upon him. If he ran all day and all night as well – if he distanced that little body of amateur pursuers for the moment – what would it profit him in the end? Could he evade arrest at last? could he escape the clutches of the Austrian law, shake off the strong hand of the Kaiserlich-Königlich government?

All at once, seized with a sudden little access of despair, he sat down on the hillside, and laughed aloud audibly. “Ha, ha, ha,” he cried, hoarsely, at the very top of his voice, as his antagonists drew nearer, “So you think you’ll catch me! You think you’ll get well paid! You want to earn a reward on me! Well, look here, Ludwig Dangl,” and he shouted through his bent hand to the foremost of his pursuers, “there’s ten thousand florins set on my head already for stabbing a man dead in an hotel at Monte Carlo – and it’s yours.. if you catch me! Come on, friend, and earn it!”

He had grown reckless now. The dare-devil spirit of the man who knows well he has forfeited his life and has no chance of escape left, had wholly taken hold of him. He sat there, by the Kamin, waiting till the pursuers were almost upon him. “Ten thousand florins!” he shouted aloud once more, waving his hat above his head, as he jumped up when they neared him. “Ten thousand florins is a nice round sum! Will you have it, Ludwig Dangl? will you have it, Karl Furst? will you have it, Fritz Mairhofer?”

His very recklessness appalled them. The men thought he must be mad. They paused, and stared hard at him. There were only three now. Neither liked to advance first. Franz waved his hat frantically, and beckoned them on towards the weathered crags that overlook St Valentin. Great rocks there rose sheer over fissured gullies. The men hardly ventured to follow him up to those frowning heights. Heaven knows what a madman, in such a mood as that, may do or dare among the cleft troughs and gorges! They halted, – debated, – then came on towards him, abreast, more slowly, step by step, in a little formed body. But Franz, now restored by a momentary pause, leaped upward like a chamois over the steep path in front of him. The fresh mountain air seemed to nerve and invigorate him. On, on, he bounded swift over the jagged steps in the rock, till he poised himself at last like a mountain goat on the very edge of the precipice. It was a sheer cliff that looked down on a great snowdrift in a ravine two hundred feet beneath him. The Robbler instinct in Franz’s blood had now gained complete mastery. He waved his hat again, with its feather turned insultingly. “Ten thousand florins!” he cried once more, in his loudest voice. “Ten thousand florins! Who wants them? Who’ll earn them?”

He laughed aloud in their faces. The three men drew on cautiously. Franz waited till they came up. Then Ludwig Dangl, mustering up courage to take the first step, stood forward and laid hands on him. Straightway Franz seized his assailant round the body with a wrestler’s grip. Ludwig tried to disengage himself; but ’twas a narrow and dangerous spot for wrestling. With a sudden wrench, Franz lifted him from the ground. Holding him grasped in his arms, he looked over the edge of the precipice. Next instant, he had leaped, with Ludwig Dangl in his embrace. One loud cry burst at once from both their straining throats. A cry of wild triumph; a cry of fierce despair. Then all was silence.

The other two men, looking awestruck and horrified over the edge of the crag, saw them fall two hundred feet sheer into the soft snow beneath. It received them gently. Not a sign marked the spot where the two bodies sank in. The soft snow closed over them. But they must have been dead many seconds before they reached the bottom.

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