“Can you stand if I lift you over?” he said, leaning against the bars.
“Of course! I can run, too,” and, in maidenly effort to free herself, she hugged him closer. They crossed the gate and together breasted a slight rise through scattered sheaves of corn-shucks. Meanwhile, Voles and the cattlemen were engaged in a cursing match until Rachel Craik, recovering her wind, screamed an eldrich command:
“Stop, you fool! They’re getting away. He has taken her down the road!”
Voles limped off in pursuit, and Mick the Wolf took up the fierce argument with the drivers. At that instant the wreck blazed into flame. Rachel had to move quickly to avoid a holocaust in which a hapless bullock provided the burnt offering. The light of this pyre revealed the distant figures of Winifred and Carshaw, whereupon the maddened Voles tried pot shots at a hundred yards. Bullets came close, too. One cut the heel of Carshaw’s shoe; another plowed a ridge through his motoring cap. Realizing that Voles would aim only at him, he told Winifred to run wide.
She caught his hand.
“Please—help!” she breathed. “I cannot run far.”
He smothered a laugh of sheer joy. Winifred’s legs were supple as his. She was probably the fleeter of the two. It was the mother-instinct that spoke in her. This was her man, and she must protect him, cover him from enemies with her own slim body.
Soon they were safe from even a chance shot. On climbing a rail fence, Carshaw led the girl clearly into view until a fold in the ground offered. Then they doubled and zigzagged. They saw some houses, but Carshaw wanted no explanation or parleying then and pressed on. They entered a lane, or driveway, and followed it. There came a murmuring of mighty waters, the voice of the sea; they were on the beach of Long Island Sound. Far behind, in the gloom, shone a lurid redness, marking the spot where the two cars and the bullock were being converted into ardent gasses.
Carshaw halted and surveyed a long, low line of blackness breaking into the deep-blue plain of the sea to the right.
“I know where we are,” he said. “There’s a hotel on that point. It’s about two miles. You could walk twenty, couldn’t you?”