Ambrotox and Limping Dick Part 32

"I don't care. If they kill me now, d.i.c.k, I don't care."

He agreed--nodding more sympathetically, she thought, than any man before him had ever nodded.

But after another silence, he said:

"And yet that makes it all the more necessary to come out top dog this time. Where d'you think they are?"

"If the Drovers' Track's good enough for a car," she answered, "I should guess--after all, it's all guessing, isn't it?--I should guess that they turned off the road at the hawthorns and the white stone, and drove straight on to Harthborough."

"They've had time to go and come back," said d.i.c.k. "If we had food with us, we might hide all night on the moor. But you'd be ill by the morning."

"Let's go on," said Amaryllis.

"You lead me to luck," he answered, "so what you say goes. A train's the safest place for us, and, if Melchard's seen his picket there after driving right over this ground, he won't be expecting to find us on the way back."

"He may be between us and Harthborough now," said Amaryllis.

"If we can pa.s.s him, then," said d.i.c.k, "his Harthborough picket won't give us much trouble. Our other way is the London road. There we might run into Melchard plus his picket. The railway's at Harthborough, so Harthborough'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 clearly marked than the path which had brought them across the base of the triangle of which the apex was the white stone by the hawthorns they had never seen.

"It's a derelict Roman road," said d.i.c.k, as they walked along it towards the cleft in the ridge. "See the small paving stones--here--there--and you can feel 'em through the turf, here at the side. Most of this gra.s.s has come since the railways took the cattle and the goods wagons off the road. 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 the road began to rise from the broad, level s.p.a.ce of the moor spreading on both sides of the old paved causeway in firm, close-nibbled gra.s.s, interspersed with tufts of ling and heather, varied by rarer clumps of gorse.

Not within a hundred yards in any direction could d.i.c.k find possible cover 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 the descending road took its last bend in the pa.s.sage by which it had traversed the ridge: the point where the approaching car must appear.

With flushed face and unflinching eyes, Amaryllis stood beside her lover, her right hand still lying light on his shoulder, her sun-bonnet fallen back, and the beauty of hair and features open to the coming enemy.

As the blue car pushed its nose round the corner, and, turning, made straight for the lower plateau, she glanced at d.i.c.k's face once more; to see there an impersonal serenity which she might have found inhuman, had she been a mere spectator of the drama which was coming. Being, however, one of its persons, she felt herself enwrapped, and uplifted from fear by the consciousness that a calm mind and a swift brain were supporting each other in her service.

In her soul she cried already, not _Nous les aurons_, but _Il les a_.

"They'll see us," said d.i.c.k. "When I say 'run!' make for that gorse-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 and yell. They'll be out of the car and after us. When they're close, I shall bolt across the road. Yell out 'don't leave me.' They won't touch you--they're after me--I've got the stuff. When they're well away, get back 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 increased his pace.

"Run!" said d.i.c.k, and Amaryllis leapt the ditch at the roadside and ran in the direction he had given. He followed clumsily, exaggerating his lameness.

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 their start.

It was, therefore, not until Amaryllis was at the rise of the ridge that they heard behind them the two pairs of feet in pursuit.

"Down!" said d.i.c.k, close behind her; and with a well simulated shriek of pain, the girl fell in a heap.

"Oh, my foot!" she cried.

d.i.c.k's chief fear was that shooting should begin too soon.

But he heard Melchard's high voice shouting angrily to Mut-mut in his own tongue.

"Jagun pakai snapong. Brenkali akau mow pukul sama prempuan."

And d.i.c.k smiled, turning his head in time to see Mut-mut tuck away his revolver.

He leaned over Amaryllis, with pretence of trying to pull her to her feet.

"All right. It works. He's telling Crop-ear not to shoot, 'fear of hitting you."

Amaryllis pushed his hands away, clutched her ankle and moaned aloud.

d.i.c.k turned from her and, at a better pace than before, hobbled across the road, pursued by entreaties from Amaryllis so agonized and lifelike as almost to deceive the very author of the scheme.

As he began, with increased appearance of lameness to labour up the slope, he once more heard Melchard's voice:

"Jagun pakai snapong, kalau dea ta mow lepas. Kita mow dapat."

Labouring still more, d.i.c.k glanced behind him and saw the two pursuers straining every nerve to overtake him, and for the moment giving no thought to Amaryllis.

Something more Melchard said, but this time d.i.c.k could not catch the order. Mut-mut, however, interpreted, by altering his course and running along the foot of the ridge towards a place where the ascent appeared less steep. By this, it seemed, he intended to cut across d.i.c.k's line of flight, and to drive him back upon Melchard.

Melchard, meantime, was toiling up the slope in d.i.c.k's footsteps with a determination unexpected in a man of his appearance and mode of life.

On the other side of the ancient causeway, at the very foot of the slope, Amaryllis, full of courage and calculation, but with a heart beating painfully until her moment for action should come.