"String 'em up!" a voice was calling. It was like the voice of a devil down in hell, full of mob malice. She shivered. "They're murdering devils. String 'em up!"
"Catch 'em first, you fool," called another voice. Again pounding boots and ... far more sinister sound ... snapping brush where a man was breaking his way straight into the thicket.
Like some grotesque, curiously shaped snake, Babe Deveril was writhing along, ever deeper into the brush tangle, ahead of her. She began crawling after him. Voices everywhere. And now dogs barking. A hundred dogs, it seemed to her taut nerves. She knew dogs; she knew how they went into a frenzy of excited joy when it was a question of a quarry, any quarry; she knew the unfailing certainty of the dog's scent. She began hurrying, struggling to get to her knees again....
"Sh! Down!"
She dropped down again and lay flat, scarce breathing. But once more she saw the vague blot of Deveril's flat form wriggling on ahead of her, almost gone now. It was so dark! She threw herself forward; she threw her arm out and her hand brushed his boot. It was a wonderful thing, to feel that boot. She was not alone. She began again following him; dry, broken, and thorny twigs snared at her; they caught in her clothes and in the laces of her boots; they tore at her skin. Yet this time she was as silent a shadow as the shadow in front of her. On and on and on, on endlessly through an eternity of darkness shot through with dim star glimmerings, and pierced with horrible voices, she went. She came out into an opening; she stood up. She was alone! And those voices and the yelping of dogs and the scuffling of heavy, insensate, merciless boots....
A hard, sudden hand caught her by the wrist. She whipped back, a scream shaping her lips. But in time she clapped a hand over her mouth. She was not alone; this was Babe Deveril, standing upright ... waiting for her! She brought her hand down and clasped it, tight, over his hand.
"Run for it again," he whispered. "Off that way ... to the right. If we can once get among those trees...."
Side by side, their hearts leaping, they ran. Gradually, but steadily, the harsh noises grew fainter behind them. They gained the fringe of trees; they splashed through the creek; they skirted a second tangle of brush and rounded the crest of a hill. And steadily and swiftly now the sounds of pursuit lessened behind them.
"And now," muttered Deveril, for the first time forsaking his cautious whisper, "if we use what brains God gave us, we are free of that hell pack."
"If they caught up with us?" she questioned him sharply.