I jumped up and snatched open the window in front. “Step on it! Speed up, man, for God’s sake! Hit her up. They’ve seen us and signaled.”
Automatically the driver threw open his cut-out and the big car jumped ahead, leaping under us like a spurred horse. An instant passed and then there came a flash and a roar from just behind us, and the glass of the back window tinkled down on to the seat where I lay. I jumped up and looked back. A great hole like a shell crater spanned the road behind us.
Suddenly I saw three little stars appear like magic in the glass of the side windows. “Keep low!” I shouted and ducked down in the seat. Bullets were splintering the woodwork and whipping through the windows all about me. I could not see the Chief from where I lay and I imagined that he had ducked too. But I could see the driver and see the blood oozing from his neck. There must have been twenty men pumping lead at us, and the experience took me back to France with an unpleasant distinctness.
But for all his wound and the whipping bullets, the driver kept the car steady; we fled down that road like a wounded buck, and after a moment or two we were clear of them. I saw the Chief lean back in his seat and reach over to take the wheel. He had been waiting with his arms outstretched to grab it if they got the driver, Heldt.
The car slowed down a little. “I’m all right, sir,” I heard the driver announce. “Just scratched me, that’s all. Straight ahead, sir?”
“Straight ahead,” answered the Chief and turned. “All right, back there, Clayton?”
“All right, sir. Never touched me. How about you?”
“Nice hospitable lot of friends you’ve got, Clayton. No, they didn’t touch me either. But it’s about time we got that gang. Blowing up a main road like that. They’ve got a nerve!” Clearly the Chief’s sense of law and order was absolutely outraged, and I chuckled to myself in the back seat. I was not sorry to have him get a taste of what I had been up against.
After that we kept a pretty sharp look-out, both before and behind us. But they seemed to have staked their hopes on getting us in the road back there, for we continued our journey unmolested. Fortunately they had not succeeded in hitting any of the tires.
We got to the railroad station and pulled up in front of it without further adventure. But I confess I was disappointed to find it almost deserted. I expected to find a huge crowd of men waiting for us.