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 Japanese 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.