“A lot of them came on horseback and the rest in the car. They’re going to carry what they’ve taken in the car and they’re taking the horses for the extra men. Our Mexicans and their women are going with them and are helping themselves to whatever they want. But where are our men? I didn’t think they’d sit down and be plundered without putting up some kind of a fight.”
She saw the crowd which had been looting the store start for the corral. The car stood alone. Without doubt they had stopped it a little way from the street and made a dash on horseback. Polly’s eyes shone.
She glanced at the sun; it was going down rapidly. It would soon be dusk. She crept cautiously out of the arroyo. If only none of the men on horseback saw her she might manage it, wild as her plan was. She shook with fear but she did not falter; a girl does not have an obstinate chin for nothing. She glanced both ways; Pachuca was still riding up and down, issuing orders which were obeyed noisily but cheerfully. She saw him point toward the corral and saw the men who had been loading the car with plunder start toward the corral on a run.
“Going after more horses,” thought the girl, stopping and crouching back of one of the cabins. If they should see her—she held her breath. The next moment she was running for the car, still sheltered by the cabins. It was this moment that Scott chose to walk down the street and draw the attention of the raiders. Polly saw him and her heart warmed.
“I knew he wasn’t a coward!” she almost sobbed. “Oh, I’m glad—but he needn’t be such an idiot as that. He’ll be shot as sure as I’m here.”
Panic stricken, she increased her pace and in a minute had reached the shelter of the car. Then the shots burst upon her ears. She turned white and clung to the door of the car. If they had killed him! She saw Scott’s face as he had left her—friendly, ugly, determined—and she knew that if they had killed him nothing else would matter—anything might happen and she would not care. Mechanically, she opened the door of the car and hastily moved some of the plunder from the floor to the seat. The Mexicans had tossed in canned goods, blankets, rifles, a couple of cash boxes and even a box of victrola records. Then she crawled into the space she had made and seizing one of the blankets, drew it over herself and over a part of the loot, giving the tonneau of the car the appearance of being full of plunder which was protected from the dust by a blanket.
There was a clatter of hoofs and Polly heard Scott’s parting yell. It brought a glorious relief to her mind for surely no one who was badly hurt could be as mad as that! She heard the answering yells of the Mexicans, then she felt and heard the door of the car flung open; someone had jumped in and was starting the engine. Something struck her—a man had thrown his bundle into the car that he might take a howling youngster on his saddle. Polly’s teeth chattered with fear; she was realizing with every throb of the engine the awful risk she was taking.
Suddenly the car moved. Polly cowered in her uncomfortable position. Cold with terror she clutched the revolver Scott had given her. Suppose at the last minute some of the other men should decide to get into the car?
“But I won’t suppose! There wouldn’t have been any time to suppose if I’d gone to war to drive an ambulance. The boys didn’t suppose when they went over the top—they just went! I hope to goodness none of these guns I’m sitting on are loaded.”
The car bumped along on the rutty road and the noise of the riders died away.