Dick had known that it would not be easy for him to get back to the cave after blowing up the road. It had been a great thrill for him to see the hillside go sliding down across the highway, obliterating it completely for a stretch of a quarter of a mile. But he had lost his own footing and gone rolling down the hill too. Before he caught himself, he was almost at the road, and there, just in front of him, was a German motorcycle messenger pulling up to a screaming stop in front of the mass of rocks that blocked his way.
Dick did not hesitate for an instant. He snatched his automatic from his pocket, fired, and watched the man topple to the ground.
“I’m afraid I’m a little too excited to be a good shot,” he told himself critically. “I believe I just winged him in the shoulder.”
But that was enough for Dick’s purpose. He pulled up the man’s motorcycle, turned it around, started it, and headed straight down the main highway for Maletta. He roared down the main street at forty miles an hour, swerving in and out among the cars, the trucks, the running soldiers with half their clothes on. The sight of such panic made him laugh with pleasure, and everything was in such a turmoil that he was able to race right through the heart of town without being noticed except as a nuisance that got in someone’s way.
“They don’t even know, half of them, what’s happened yet,” he told himself as he sped out again on the northeast road. “But they’ll know mighty soon,” he added, “for there comes the water.”
His motorcycle wheels were already running in water an inch deep. Then it was six inches, eight inches, ten inches. Ahead he saw it boiling down at him like a solid wall, and he leaped from the motorcycle and cut into the fields. The mud and water slowed him down but he raced ahead as fast as he could. Another fifty feet, another thirty! The water was around his knees. Twenty feet—ten feet to go to high ground—and the water was around his waist. And then he made it. He grabbed the trunk of a sapling and pulled himself up the slope. Then he sat down, panting heavily. But in another minute his feet were in the steadily rising water, and he pulled himself up again.
“Anyway,” he told himself, “I know the dam really went out. It’s not just cracked and leaking.”
Breathing a little more easily, he got up and started up the hill toward the cave. Halfway up he heard the firing of guns. The sound came from the cave without a doubt. He ran forward, circling around to come at the cave from above if possible. He figured that he must be just a little above the cave entrance when he heard another burst of fire and heard a bullet zing through the branches overhead. He dropped to the ground and edged his way down the slope on his belly, keeping behind trees as much as possible. He knew there was a big tree growing out of a split rock just above the cave entrance. If only he could get to that—
“Scotti must be alone in there,” he said. “And—yes, I can see them—they’re German soldiers who have come racing up the hill to get away from the flood waters. They probably would have run smack into the cave by accident if Scotti hadn’t fired to keep them off. I’ve got to get down to him.”