“Now let’s get out of here!” he bid. “You’re all right?” she asked. He was testing his legs. “All right,” he assured. The Jaeger machine gunner had interrupted his fire; and the airplane, which had attacked, was far away at this moment. “I heard you were about here, Cynthia,” Gerry said. “That’s why--when I had the chance--I came this way.” She made no reply as she watched the road to the rear upon which the refugees were appearing. A shell burst before them. “I have to go to them!” Ruth cried. “They’ll scatter; see; they’re doing it!” Gerry said, as the French ran separately through the fields till the rise of ground guarded them. “But we’d better skip now!” He had removed his maps from his machine; warning her, he lit a match and ignited the wreckage. The flame, bursting from the gasoline, fed upon the varnished wing fabric, clouding up dense and heavy smoke which drifted with the breeze and screened them as they arose and, crouching, ran. The German machine gunner evidently looked upon the fire as the result of his shots and suspected no flight behind the smoke. The flyer, who had attacked, likewise seemed to see the fire as the result of his bullets. He turned away to other targets. Gerry got Ruth, unhurt, to the crest of the slope; they slipped over it and for the moment were safe. The car which Ruth had driven stood in the road. CHAPTER XII: “HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?” The French peasants, who had been fired upon and had gained the protection of the slope, gathered about them. “Beyond, also, the road is open to fire,” Gerry informed them in French; and he directed them to proceed in little groups and by the fields away from the road. “Monsieur le Lieutenant is wounded,” an old man observed solicitously. “Barely at all,” Gerry denied; but swayed as he said so. “Your car must go by the road,” Gerry said to Ruth. “You go with them in the fields; I will take it on for a bit.” He meant to relieve her for the run over the exposed stretch. He tried to step up to the driver’s seat; but his leg would not bear his weight and he fell backward and would have gone to the ground had Ruth not caught him. “That’s simply a knee twist from being bent under my ship,” he asserted. “That shrap hardly scratched me,” he referred to the red spot on his side where her fingers were feeling. “Help me lift Monsieur le Lieutenant,” Ruth bid the old peasant. Gerry tried again to climb alone; but his leg had quite given away. As they lifted, he pulled himself into the seat and took the wheel. “You need both feet for the pedals,” Ruth reminded him, simply; and he moved over without further protest and let her drive. The car was a covered Ford truck and Gerry, gazing back, saw an old French woman, a child, and two men, who had been injured, lying upon the bedding over the floor. The car was coming to the section of road which the German gunner had registered and Gerry turned about and watched Ruth while she drove.