“She’s tiring! They’ll get her!” moaned Hazel.
“Why didn’t you let me go?” screamed Tommy, beside herself with anxiety.
The guardian did not answer. Her eyes, wide and staring, were following every movement of the fleeing girl and the pursuing bulls.
Harriet stopped short, bending over in a crouching position.
“She’s going to try to trick them! Oh, what courage!” breathed Miss Elting.
“Look! Thee her now!” shouted Tommy, with a note of triumph in her strained voice.
The animals were fairly upon Harriet. When it seemed as though their horns were touching her, the girl leaped obliquely into the ditch. They saw her run, splashing along in it for a few rods, then spring to the bank on the same side from which she had jumped in.
The watchers saw something else too. The bulls, so intent upon reaching their victim, had taken no notice of the ditch. Perhaps they had been charging with closed eyes, as many bulls do. At any rate the leading beast flung himself headlong into the ditch. The others braced themselves with their front feet and went sliding into the ditch on top of their leader, digging furrows with their hoofs in the soft dirt.
Harriet Burrell’s ruse had been successful. She spoke no word, but a glint of triumph flashed into her eyes as she cast a quick glance at the floundering animals, then ran straight toward her companions. This time there was no limping, no lessening of speed. She had covered less than half the distance before two of the animals that had slid into the ditch had recovered themselves and began looking about for the prey that had eluded them.
The slender figure of the Meadow-Brook girl, they soon discovered, was racing across the field. The two bulls clambered out of the ditch and charged again. Now that they were in the open field it was a race that would go to the fleetest. No tricks would avail Harriet this time. She knew that her safety depended on outrunning her pursuers. Had Harriet not been an athletic girl she would have succumbed long before. As it was she ran at a wonderful rate of speed. The shouts of her companions, though heard but faintly, encouraged her, for Harriet’s mind was on her work.