"All right," said Smith, briefly. He added: "Look out for sink-holes,
Mike."
Clinch tossed his heavy rifle to his shoulder: "Let's go," he said in his pleasant, misleading way, "— and I'll shoot the guts outa any fella that don't show up at roll call."
* * * * *
III
For its size there is no fiercer animal than a rat.
Rat-like rage possessed Leverett. In his headlong flight through the dusk, fear, instead of quenching, added to his rage; and he ran on and on, crashing through the undergrowth, made wilder by the pain of vicious blows from branches which flew back and struck him in the dark.
Thorns bled him; unseen logs tripped him; he heard Clinch's bullets whining around him; and he ran on, beginning to sob and curse in a frenzy of fury, fear, and shame.
Shots from Clinch's rifle ceased; the fugitive dropped into a heavy, shuffling walk, slavering, gasping, gesticulating with his weaponless fists in the darkness.
"Gol ram ye, I'll fix ye!" he kept stammering in his snarlin, jangling voice, broken by sobs. "I'll learn ye, yeh poor danged thing, gol ram ye——"
An unseen limb struck him cruelly across the face, and a moose-bush tripped him flat. Almost crazed, he got up, yelling in his pain, one hand wet and sticky from blood welling up from his cheek-bone.