Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/190

 disregarded her while he waited for the car to appear on the registered stretch of the road; but a machine gunner with the Jaegers got sight and opened upon the slope. Gerry could see the spurt of the bullets in the dry dust of the planted field; the girl instantly recognized she was fired at and she sprang sidewise and came forward.

"Go back!" Gerry called. "Keep away!"

She stumbled and rolled and Gerry gasped, sure that she was hit; but she regained her feet instantly and, crouching, ran in behind him. Her hands—those slender, soft but strong little hands which he had first touched in Mrs. Corliss' conservatory weeks ago—grasped him and held him.

"Keep down," Gerry begged of her. "Keep down behind the engine!"

"You!" she murmured to him. "I thought when I saw you in the air and when you fought them so, that it might be you! Where are you hurt; oh, how much?"

"Not much; I don't know where, exactly. Keep down behind the engine, Cynthia!"

She was not hurt at all, he saw; and though the tangle of wires enmeshed his legs, he was able to turn about and seize her and press her down lower. For the machine gunner was spraying the wreck of the airplane now. She was working with her strong little hands, trying to untwist and unloop the wires to get him free when Gerry heard the motor noises of an airplane, descending. He gazed up and saw a German machine swooping a thousand feet above the ground. The pilot passed over them and, diving, came back five hundred feet lower; he took another look, circled and returned barely a hundred yards