As the flames began to spread, there was a rapid fusillade from the rear

of the house, and a hundred men and more, who had kept on through the

fields to the north, assailed it from behind. Their shots passed clear

through the flimsy partitions, and there was a horrid screeching, like a

beast's howls, from within. The front door was thrown open, and a lean,

fierce-eyed girl, with a case-knife in her hand, ran out in the face of

the mob. At sound of the shots in the rear they had begun to advance on

the house a second time, and Hartley Bowlder was the nearest man to the

girl. With awful words, and shrieking inconceivably, she made straight at

Hartley, and attacked him with the knife. She struck at him again and

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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. The fugitives did not

turn; they kept on running, and they had nearly reached the other side of

the field, when suddenly, without any premonitory gesture, the elder

Skillett dropped flat on his face. The Cross-Roaders stood by each other

that day, for four or five men ran out of the nearest shanty into the

open, lifted the prostrate figure from the ground, and began to carry it

back with them. But Mr. Skillett was alive; his curses were heard above

all other sounds. Lige and Schofield fired again, and one of the rescuers

staggered. Nevertheless, as the two men slid down from the roof, the

burdened Cross-Readers were seen to break into a run; and at that, with

another yell, fiercer, wilder, more joyous than the first, the Plattville

men followed.




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