It was a rout for the company forces, a clear victory for the strikers.
Then with a whirr like giant mechanical wings the belated guard automobiles, four of them, swung around the curving crest of the road fifty feet behind and above the cut. The trees and underbrush had been cleared for just this purpose. The huge searchlights, one to each car, wavered, then poured their blinding flood on the dark gap summits.
"Oh, God! The deppities——"
The light itself seemed to stagger those who had been triumphant in the dark. They diverged sharply from the point of advantage. Those on the far side cleared back toward the east. Those on the near side halted uncertainly for a fatal second, before they ran toward the two ends of the cut.
"Let 'em have it!"
An intermittent sheet of flame broke from the guard automobiles. The defenseless workers stopped and tumbled grotesquely. To Dawson's horrified imagination it seemed that more than a dozen lay flat and twitching in the hellish flare of the searchlights.
"Come on!"
"Got 'im, Jim!"
"Take that, you damned——"
With savage yells the new attackers, firing whenever they saw a moving target, covered the slope, and halted above the train.