CHAPTER XX.
A ROPE OR SOMETHING.
As they reached the level of the moor and the Drovers' Track, to joinwhich ancient road their path stretched on for yet a mile, they turned,moved by a common impulse, to look down on the green hollow which hadbeen the nest of so great a happiness.
"Emerald, you said, Amaryllis?"
"And blue, Dick, from the sky."
When they had tramped a half-mile or more in silence which seemed toAmaryllis very close communion, Dick spoke; for already he was feelingthe stones of the world beneath their feet.
"We put our money on the wrong horse, dear. They didn't suspect--theyknew. And they're near us," he said.
"I don't care. If they kill me now, Dick, I don't care."
He agreed--nodding more sympathetically, she thought, than any manbefore him had ever nodded.
But after another silence, he said:
"And yet that makes it all the more necessary to come out top dog thistime. Where d'you think they are?"
"If the Drovers' Track's good enough for a car," she answered, "I shouldguess--after all, it's all guessing, isn't it?--I should guess that theyturned off the road at the hawthorns and the white stone, and drovestraight on to Harthborough."
"They've had time to go and come back," said Dick. "If we had food withus, we might hide all night on the moor. But you'd be ill by themorning."
"Let's go on," said Amaryllis.
"You lead me to luck," he answered, "so what you say goes. A train's thesafest place for us, and, if Melchard's seen his picket there afterdriving right over this ground, he won't be expecting to find us on theway back."
"He may be between us and Harthborough now," said Amaryllis.
"If we can pass him, then," said Dick, "his Harthborough picket won'tgive us much trouble. Our other way is the London road. There we mightrun into Melchard plus his picket. The railway's at Harthborough, soHarthborough's got it."
"And here," said the girl, "is the Drovers' Track."
Before they knew it, they had stepped into a way wider and more clearlymarked than the path which had brought them across the base of thetriangle of which the apex was the white stone by the hawthorns they hadnever seen.
"It's a derelict Roman road," said Dick, as they walked along it towardsthe cleft in the ridge. "See the small paving stones--here--there--andyou can feel 'em through the turf, here at the side. Most of this grasshas come since the railways took the cattle and the goods wagons off theroad. If the track is as good as this all the way----"
"What's that?" exclaimed Amaryllis, stopping and listening.
They were not more than three hundred yards from the point where theroad began to rise from the broad, level space of the moor spreading onboth sides of the old paved causeway in firm, close-nibbled grass,interspersed with tufts of ling and heather, varied by rarer clumps ofgorse.
Not within a hundred yards in any direction could Dick find possiblecover from eyes descending the Bull's Neck.
The pair stood motionless, their hearts in their ears.
What they heard was unmistakable.
"A motor," said Amaryllis. "It's coming down."
She laid a hand on his shoulder, lifting her face to him.
When he raised his own from it, it was to watch the point where thedescending road took its last bend in the passage by which it hadtraversed the ridge: the point where the approaching car must appear.
With flushed face and unflinching eyes, Amaryllis stood beside herlover, her right hand still lying light on his shoulder, her sun-bonnetfallen back, and the beauty of hair and features open to the comingenemy.
As the blue car pushed its nose round the corner, and, turning, madestraight for the lower plateau, she glanced at Dick's face once more; tosee there an impersonal serenity which she might have found inhuman, hadshe been a mere spectator of the drama which was coming. Being, however,one of its persons, she felt herself enwrapped, and uplifted from fearby the consciousness that a calm mind and a swift brain were supportingeach other in her service.
In her soul she cried already, not _Nous les aurons_, but _Il les a_.
"They'll see us," said Dick. "When I say 'run!' make for thatgorse-bush. I'll be behind, overdoing my limp. When I say 'down!'fall--sprained ankle. I try to pull you up. You grip your ankle andyell. They'll be out of the car and after us. When they're close, Ishall bolt across the road. Yell out 'don't leave me.' They won't touchyou--they're after me--I've got the stuff. When they're well away, getback to the car. Get in. Can you drive her?"
"Yes, it's a Seely-Thompson."
"Get her round, head to the rise, ready to pick me up. Got it?"
"Yes," said Amaryllis.
From the car came a queer animal cry. The machine shot suddenly forward.
Deceived by the immobility of the waiting pair, the driver had increasedhis pace.
"Run!" said Dick, and Amaryllis leapt the ditch at the roadside and ranin the direction he had given. He followed clumsily, exaggerating hislameness.
The car shot by them, as they ran obliquely in the opposite direction,so adding, before the driver could pull up, a hundred yards to theirstart.
It was, therefore, not until Amaryllis was at the rise of the ridge thatthey heard behind them the two pairs of feet in pursuit.
"Down!" said Dick, close behind her; and with a well simulated shriek ofpain, the girl fell in a heap.
"Oh, my foot!" she cried.
Dick's chief fear was that shooting should begin too soon.
But he heard Melchard's high voice shouting angrily to Mut-mut in hisown tongue.
"Jagun pakai snapong. Brenkali akau mow pukul sama prempuan."
And Dick smiled, turning his head in time to see Mut-mut tuck away hisrevolver.
He leaned over Amaryllis, with pretence of trying to pull her to herfeet.
"All right. It works. He's telling Crop-ear not to shoot, 'fear ofhitting you."
Amaryllis pushed his hands away, clutched her ankle and moaned aloud.
Dick turned from her and, at a better pace than before, hobbled acrossthe road, pursued by entreaties from Amaryllis so agonized and lifelikeas almost to deceive the very author of the scheme.
As he began, with increased appearance of lameness to labour up theslope, he once more heard Melchard's voice:
"Jagun pakai snapong, kalau dea ta mow lepas. Kita mow dapat."
Labouring still more, Dick glanced behind him and saw the two pursuersstraining every nerve to overtake him, and for the moment giving nothought to Amaryllis.
Something more Melchard said, but this time Dick could not catch theorder. Mut-mut, however, interpreted, by altering his course and runningalong the foot of the ridge towards a place where the ascent appearedless steep. By this, it seemed, he intended to cut across Dick's line offlight, and to drive him back upon Melchard.
Melchard, meantime, was toiling up the slope in Dick's footsteps with adetermination unexpected in a man of his appearance and mode of life.
On the other side of the ancient causeway, at the very foot of theslope, Amaryllis, full of courage and calculation, but with a heartbeating painfully until her moment for action should come.
This, she had resolved, must be the moment when she should lose sight ofthe last runner; and by turning her head sideways, though never raisingit, she could see that Dick had the same idea; for he had so directedhis flight that he and Melchard were soon hidden from her, while thelumbering Mut-mut, wasting huge force, it seemed, upon each shortstride, pounding along the lower ground, vanished only when, reachinghis chosen line of ascent, he began to mount the hill.
Then Amaryllis rose, lifted the voluminous skirt, tucked the hem intothe waistband, and ran, with long flashes of grey stocking, for theabandoned car.
Dick, still leading his enemies on, saw her in one of his calculatinglooks behind him. And his heart leapt into his throat for pride of thewoman that could listen to, comprehend and interpret orders--and carrythem out with a stride like that.
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He prolonged his backward look, and Melchard, below him, observed thatit was directed over his head, and turned his eyes in the samedirection.
He saw the girl running, pulled a weapon from his hip and tried a longshot.
The crack of the Browning had hardly reached her ears before Amarylliswas in the driving-seat. But not for a flicker did she turn her eyesfrom the business of the moment.
Melchard, with his left hand on his hip and the barrel of the automaticresting on the upturned elbow close to his chin, was on the point offiring again at the very moment when Mut-mut, having reached the top ofthe ridge, was running back to meet Dick, and Dick, coming down theslope at the best of his prodigious though uneven stride, was within twopaces of Melchard's back.
At the sound of his rushing approach, and in the very act of firing,Melchard started. The shot went wide, and the man turned himself and hisweapon on the enemy that was nearer even than he guessed.
In the very moment of wheeling about, he received a rugger hand-off onhis right jaw, which launched him many yards, sideways down the slope,to land and turn literally heels over head as he fell.
His pistol fell more slowly and further, after describing a wavering arcover his head.
And then Dick Bellamy ran; ran as he had not run since he broke the tapein a certain sprint of four hundred metres at Buenos Ayres, in fortynine and a quarter seconds. But that was when his legs were an equalpair.
Amaryllis saw it all; Mut-mut on the sky-line of the ridge, hesitating;Melchard and his pistol in eccentric parabolas; Dick, with a wisp ofblack hair over his wounded cheek, "flying," she called it, down thelast of the slope, and crossing the level ground to her and the car; awild man running, she thought, with the pace of a racehorse, and themovement, not of a runaway, but of a winner. "And, oh!" she would say tohim afterwards, "your funny eyes! How they blazed!"
Within four strides of the car.
"Let her rip," he grunted, and taking the low door of the tonneau in hisstride, landed on the back seat.
The car rushed forward.
Dick looked round him. Melchard was on his feet, bent and searching thelong grass and scrub of the lower slope.
"The beast's got some guts," muttered Dick.
Melchard stood erect and began to run towards them, slowly andpainfully.
"He's found his gun," said Dick.
A raised arm and a sharp crack proved his words.
"Throw in the top speed," said Dick. "We _must_ go through the Bull'sNeck. No cover the other way."
He looked up at the ridge. Mut-mut was not there nor anywhere in sight.