“Come on, let’s all go,” he said. “They’ve gone, but they might come back.”
Without a word, the others followed him and jumped into the car, while Ben, who knew a little about motors, began to crank up the machine. Suddenly a voice spoke out of the darkness:
“This looks like a nice little party. Get out of that car, every one of you, or I’ll shoot,” and the sinister looking one-armed man, who appeared to have sprung up from the earth, stood at the side of the automobile with his pistol pointed straight at Billie. “Did you imagine,” he continued, “that a parcel of children could fool a man like me?”
There was no reply to the question. Mary and Nancy were so limp with fear they could not have lifted a little finger if there had been a dozen pistols pointing at them. Elinor might have slipped a ramrod down her back, so stiffly and proudly did she hold herself in that fearful moment. Billie had turned white as a sheet, but she still had strength enough left to make a move to get out when Ben, whose stubborn nature would not even now give up the fight, raised his overgrown, boyish figure from the ground where he had been kneeling, and with a quick motion pressed a piece of glittering steel to the man’s forehead.
“Drop that pistol, or you’re a dead man,” he said in the deepest chest tones he could produce. His voice was still in the tenor stage.
Not even a gentleman of fortune who had lost an eye and an arm in past dangerous adventures could quite keep from shrinking at this extremely unpleasant sensation produced by cold steel against his face, and without a word of protest he dropped the pistol in the road.
“Now, back off,” said Ben, “and don’t stop until you get as far as that tree over there.”
The man retreated, cursing under his breath, and in another instant they were off in the dark.
“We forgot to pick up his pistol,” exclaimed Charlie, as three shots rang out in quick succession.
“But Ben has one,” said Billie, feeling somehow that she had known these nice brave boys for a long time, instead of three-quarters of an hour.