Where to go or precisely what to do except to run was more than the fugitive could tell.
Accordingly he sped with all the haste at his command, running, it may be said, as never before. His terror was irrestrainable when he cast a single glance over his shoulder and saw that the buck was in savage pursuit.
“Fire! murder! Tom and Jim! where are you? Come to my help, quick, or I’m a goner!” shouted Bob, dodging to the right and left like a Digger Indian, seeking to avoid the rifle shots of a pursuing enemy; “why don’t you help me? The buck has got me and is going to chaw me all to pieces!”
CHAPTER XXII—HOT QUARTERS
In such critical moments events come and go with startling rapidity.
Bob Budd was never in greater peril than when fleeing from the enraged buck that was determined to kill him. It was not only able to run much faster than he, but he was practically powerless to defend himself, since his gun was empty, and though he might face about and deliver one blow, it could effect nothing in the way of slaying or checking the animal.
In his terror the fugitive did the best thing possible without knowing it.
He caught sight of a large oak that had been blown down by some violent gale, the trunk near the base being against the ground, which sloped gradually upward and away from the earth to the top, which was fully a dozen feet high, held in place by the large limbs bent and partly broken beneath.
Without seeing how this shelter was to prove of any help to him, he ran desperately for it.
Fortunately it was but a short distance off, or he never would have lived to reach it.