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 selves beyond doubt. They would do this with a volley, if they were Baretta's gunmen, Calvin knew; yet he must wait.

He was flung with the leap of the little car as Neski swerved it from the road and upon the bumps of the frozen field; he heard shots, heard the windshield crack and wood splinter, and he thrust Neski's pistol between the curtains and fired.

It was almost at random, he realized, with no chance of hitting while the car jounced in the frozen furrows, so he withdrew his hand; the other car, too, ceased to fire. It had run on the road past the point where Neski had taken to the fields; it was, Calvin saw, a much larger and heavier car and it carried, to judge from the volley of pistol shots, three or four gunmen.

With his left hand, Calvin clung to the arm of Joan Daisy. "You hurt?" he asked her.

"No, are you?"

"All right?" he asked of Neski.

"Yeh. What they doing?" Neski could not take his eyes from the obstacles of the ground.

"Coming after us," Calvin reported, for the big car followed into the field; and he released Joan Daisy to have both hands for reloading the pistol.

"Keep down," he begged her.

"What's the use?"

No use, he realized, when he saw, as had she, that the frozen ground supported Baretta's car which was cutting across ahead of them. "Go left," said Calvin to Neski.

"Fence there."

"Go ahead."

"Sure," said Neski. "Sure. . . . Give me my gun, when we stop."

Calvin held it, reloaded, and he counted, as he used to in imaginary battles when he was a little boy, how each