Lansing, unafraid, sprang from the car and rushed to the prostrate form. In a second he was tugging at the noose, cursing frightfully. No one opposed him. The mob seemed suddenly to have become paralyzed, afflicted by the stupor of indecision. Many were already fleeing madly from the scene—down the road, across the slough—yellow-hearted deserters whose only thought was to escape the consequences of recognition. A few score, falling back a little in stubborn disorder, stood glowering and blinking outside the shafts of light. Men with guns and pistols and axes they were, but cowed by the swift realization that they dared not use them.
The tall, gaunt figure in the tonneau was praying, his hands uplifted. By his side stood a woman.
Now a woman flung herself down beside the man with the rope around his neck, sobbing, moaning, her arms straining to lift his shoulders from the ground.
A baffled roar went up from the mob. Men surged forward and hands were laid upon the rope—too late. The noose was off—and Sammy Parr standing over the doctor and the distracted girl, had a revolver in his hand.
“Come on!” he yelled. “Come on, you dirty cowards! You swine! You damned Huns! Come on and get a man-sized pill!”
From all sides boomed the shouts and curses of a quickly revived purpose.
“Rush ’em!”
“Kill the—”
“Beat their heads off!”
“Get him! Get him!”