In the Clutch of the War-God Part 8

He saw Ethel das.h.i.+ng across the field, hurdling the cotton rows. The officer was racing down the road, seeming away from her, but in another moment he turned through a gap in the fence and rode down upon the fleeing woman.

The athletic Winslow vaulted the six-foot fence with an easy spring, and tore madly through the obstructing vegetation.

The rider overtaking the woman, tried to hold her, first by the arm, and failing in that, he grabbed her by the hair. Winslow wondered why she did not shoot him, and then he recalled that he was carrying both weapons.

In another instant he was up with them and had dragged the man from his horse and flung him to the ground. The soldier kicked and swore, but half drunk, his resistance was of small consequence to his well-trained adversary.

"Here," called Winslow to the girl, who had tumbled down in a heap more from fright than physical exhaustion, "come and get my knife and cut the rein from the horse's bridle."

Thus equipped, the two strapped their captive's hands and one foot together behind him.

"There now," said Winslow, as he relieved the officer of his weapon.

"Hop back to the bridge and look after your comrade. He fell on the turnpike a while ago and I'm afraid he hurt his head. We'll have to be going."

"Shall we take the horse?" asked Ethel.

"No," replied her companion, beginning to throw clods at the animal, "we'll simply run him away. As for us, we are safer on foot, and will in the long run make better time."

"You are not tired, are you?" he asked, as they turned into the roadway again.

"No," she replied, "only a bit tired and weak from my scare. How far have we come?"

"Fifteen miles, perhaps; I really hardly know; we've been interrupted so much."

They made a long detour through the fields to avoid a group of buildings. Striking the road again, they soon came upon a slight rise of land that stood well above the level of the surrounding country.

"Are we not rather conspicuous here?" asked the girl.

"Well, rather," admitted her companion, pausing to look around; "but I guess we can see as far as we can be seen."

"Look! look!" called Ethel excitedly, jerking her companion's arm and pointing to the south, where the flat horizon was broken by the derricks and tanks of the oil fields.

At first Winslow saw nothing, and then shading his eyes he sighted what looked like a great bevy of birds flying just above the horizon.

Larger and larger grew the specks against the sky.

"They will be over us in fifteen minutes," said Winslow; "let's get up in that oak over there, where we can see without being seen."

Safely hidden by the enveloping foliage, the man and the girl now watched the approach of the planes. As they came over the oil region the planes began swooping near the ground and then rapidly rising again.

"Its j.a.panese after the American cavalry, I guess," said Winslow. In a few minutes black smoke belched forth at numerous points from the petroleum works.

After a time a cloud of dust arose from a great meadow that spread for several miles to the north of the oil wells. A group of aeroplanes hovered closely above the dust cloud and kept up that periodical swooping towards the earth.

"It's stampeding cavalry," said the sharp-eyed Ethel, "and the airmen are dropping bombs on them."

The cloud of dust came nearer and nearer until they could see the swift fall of the deadly missiles from the swooping planes and the havoc wrought in the straggling ranks by the showers of pellets from the shrapnel exploding above their heads.

When the foremost of the cavalry troop were perhaps a quarter of a mile from the observers, a commanding officer, who was riding well in the lead, wheeled his horse, threw away his jacket, tore off his white s.h.i.+rt and waived it frantically above his head.

An answering truce flag soon appeared from a plane above and the jaded hors.e.m.e.n, riding up, drew rein and waited.

The truce plane now swooped low and dropped a message fastened to a white cloth. A soldier caught it and brought it to the officer, who signalled a.s.sent.

Orders were called along the line, and the men filed by and piled their weapons in an inglorious heap.

After this most of the lazy circling planes rose and made off to the left, while a few a.s.signed to guard duty circled above the retreating cavalry, as they moved off slowly in the opposite direction.

Two belated members of the troop, who had lost their horses, flung themselves down to rest for a moment in the lengthening shadow of the oak tree.

"Oh Gawd!" said one, as he panted and mopped his forehead. "Oh Gawd!

I was scared! That d.a.m.ned shrapnel bursting right over us and no chance to fight back or get away. It ain't no fair fighting like that--you can't get at 'em."

"They've tricked us, they have," returned his companion. "Our own airmen's up in Nebraska chasing the j.a.ps that gave us the slip this morning, and here these d.a.m.n hawks come swooping in. I reckon it's reinforcements from j.a.pan. The transports that brought the first bunch must have been back and got another load, and this time it seems to be regular soldiers--here to kill--the others were just decoys."

"No, they ain't exactly decoys; they're here to stay and raise families, and d.a.m.ned if that ain't what I'm going to do, if I ever get out of this. Gawd! our loss must be something awful, and they're at it yet. Look! see 'em over there by Beaumont like a flock of crows. The bunch that got us was just a few of them."

For a time both soldiers eyed the distant fighting.

"When I get out of this," continued the first speaker; "when I get out, I'm going to join the Regenerationists."

"What's that; peace cranks?"

"Yep; but it's more than that, it's health cranks and temperance cranks, and moral cranks, and socialist cranks, and every other kind of crank that believes in people being decent and living happy--health, quiet lives, instead of fighting and robbing and--boozing and abusing themselves and each other to death."

"Oh, h.e.l.l! don't preach just because you're scared," said the other, getting up.

"Call it preaching if you like, but believe me, I've been getting letters from the folks back home, and my people ain't such poor stuff either, if I did join the army, and I want to tell you that such preaching is getting d.a.m.n popular lately. This fall's election, you know, and the way we've been done up here to-day, will have a lot to do with the outcome."

"We'd better move," said the other, looking up. "That j.a.p up there thinks we're going back after our guns."

With the oil regions again in the hands of the vigilant j.a.panese, Winslow and Ethel found escape more perilous and difficult. But on the third night they succeeded in getting through the lines and reaching Winslow's confederates, who were awaiting him near St.

Charles, La. From hence they travelled by aeroplane to a secluded railroadless valley in the heart of the Ozarks.

It was here that the secret printing plant of the _Regenerationist_ had been established. Ethel knew nothing of printing or journalism, but a place was found for her in the department of circulation.

While news could be received via wireless, the paper and supplies, as well as the men who went to and fro from the secret printing plant of the outlawed publication, had to be transported by plane.

Aviators with sufficient skill and daring for the task were hard to find. Already at home in the air, it was only a few days until Ethel was driving a plane on a paper route.

The seven hundred miles to Denver she covered one night, returning the next. She started out with half a ton of papers--seventy-two thousand copies--which in suitable bundles were dropped by the boy in the center of the triangular signal fires which local agents built at night in open fields.

Once she lost her load by a fall in the Kansas River, and once she ran out of fuel and held up a rich country house at the point of a pistol and demanded the supply of automobile gasoline.

Worst of all, she was chased one night by a government secret service plane. Despairing of outflying them, she got and held the position directly above their craft, while the boy rolled a two-hundred-pound bale of _Regenerationists_ over on the other's wing and sent the Federal airmen somersaulting into eternity.

But these stirring times did not last long. With the second j.a.panese invasion and the Orientals now established in two widely separated sections of the country, the authorities at Was.h.i.+ngton soon acceded to a truce, and one of the immediate results was abolition of martial law and re-establishment of a free press.