With awful words, and shrieking inconceivably, she made straight at
Hartley, and attacked him with the knife. She struck at him again and
again, and, in her anguish of hate and fear, was so extraordinary a
spectacle that she gained for her companions the four or five seconds they
needed to escape from the house. As she hurled herself alone at the
oncoming torrent, they sped from the door unnoticed, sprang over the
fence, and reached the open lots to the west before they were seen by
Willetts from the roof.
"Don't let 'em fool you!" he shouted. "Look to I your left! There they go!
Don't let 'em get away."
The Cross-Readers were running across the field. They were Bob Skillett
and his younger brother, and Mr. Skillett was badly damaged: he seemed to
be holding his jaw on his face with both hands. The girl turned, and sped
after them. She was over the fence almost as soon as they were, and the
three ran in single file, the girl last. She was either magnificently
sacrificial and fearless, or she cunningly calculated that the regulators
would take no chances of killing a woman-child, for she kept between their
guns and her two companions, trying to cover and shield the latter with
her frail body.
"Shoot, Lige," called Watts. "If we fire from here we'll hit the girl.
Shoot!"
Willetts and Ross Schofield were still standing on the roof, at the edge,
out of the smoke, and both fired at the same time.
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