Then, wheeling, Tom shouted back:
“Joe! Come here on the jump! It’s all safe, now!”
There was a sound of scrambling back at the thicket and hummock. Next, Dawson almost flung Ted Dunstan ahead of him, then sprang out, snatching up the slight body in his arms and running toward them.
“Now, let us into your car, and let us get away from here,” begged Tom, while Warren, staring at Joe’s burden, gasped:
“You’ve got——”
“The Dunstan heir!” Halstead finished for him. “And the Alvarez crew are thick about here. Don’t lose a moment.”
Joe leaped into the tonneau, passing up his burden ahead of him. The rest crowded in. The man at the steering wheel let out a few notches of speed, and the car shot ahead. For a few seconds nothing was heard from any hostile watcher. Then a rifle report sounded, crisp and brisk, and a bullet sang by close over their heads.
“I’m not going to have the law made a target of in that fashion,” uttered Warren. “Stop the auto, and I’ll go back to give them all the fight they want.”
“But wait until we get the Dunstan lad safe in Nantucket,” begged Halstead.
“I guess you’re right about that,” nodded the deputy sheriff.