As she spoke there sounded once more the ripping crack of a rifle, the
singing of a bullet past them, and with it the flatter, louder noise of
the shot-gun was repeated. Her eye in the act of turning to her task,
caught the silhouette of old Gideon Himes's uncouth figure relieved
against the noonday sky, as he sprang high, both arms flung up, the
hands empty and clutching, and pitched headlong to his face. But her
mind scarcely registered the impression, for a rifle ball struck the
shaly edge of a bluff under which the road at this point ran, and tore
loose a piece of the slate-like rock, which glanced whirling into the
tonneau and grazed Gray Stoddard's temple. He fell forward, crumpling
down into the bottom of the vehicle.
"On--go on, honey!" yelled Pros, motioning vehemently to the girl.
"Don't look back here--I'll tend to him"; and he stooped over the
motionless form.
Then came the roaring impression of speed, of rushing bushes that
gathered themselves and ran back past the car while, working under full
power, it stood stationary, as it seemed to Johnnie, in the middle of a
long, dusty gray ribbon that was the road. The cries of the men behind
them, all sounds of pursuit, were soon left so far in the distance that
they were unheard.
"Ain't this rather fast?" shouted Uncle Pros, who had lifted Stoddard's
bleeding head to his knee and, crouched on the bottom of the tonneau,
was shielding the younger man from further injury as the motor lurched
and pitched.
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