people get the inside facts of this affair the sooner they will
decide to stop it, and it's forty-five miles to the nearest place
where I can get in touch with my people."
Bareheaded, through the hot sun, they travelled rapidly along the
turnpike, keeping a sharp lookout for occasional parties of cavalry
and hiding in the fields until they passed. Sometimes they talked of
the contrasted ways of life in Japan and in America, and again
Winslow wrote hurriedly in his note-book as he walked.
About three o'clock in the afternoon they stopped in the shade where
a rivulet fell over a small cataract.
"Aren't you hungry?" asked Ethel, after they had drunk from the
brook.
"I don't know. I hadn't thought of it particularly," replied her
companion. "Let's see, the last time I ate was in a farmhouse north
of Houston. That was eight days ago. When have you last eaten?"
"Yesterday morning," replied the girl.
"Then you are probably hungrier than I am."
With their conversation and the murmur of the waterfall they had
failed to detect the approach of two cavalry officers, who, walking
their tired mounts, had come up unheeded.
"Hey! look at the beauty in breeches!" called one of the approaching
men.
[Illustration: He rolled a bundle of "Regenerationists" on the wing
of the aeroplane below.]
"Her for mine," returned the other.
"I saw it first--hie!" returned the first, drawing rein.
"Give it to me, you hog; you've got one!"
"All right, all right--go take it--maybe the bum will object,"
laughed the first, as the unshaven Winslow advanced in front of the
girl.
"Run quick," called Winslow to Ethel. "They're too drunk to shoot
straight."
The turnpike was inclosed by a high, woven-wire fence, and the girl
obeying turned down the road. Her would-be claimant put spurs to his
horse and dashed after her, leaving Winslow covering the rear
horseman with his magazine pistol.
"Well," said the drunken officer weakly, "I ain't doing nothing."
"Then ride down the road the other way as fast as you can go."
The officer obeyed.
For a moment Winslow watched him and then turned to see Ethel
climbing over the woven-wire fence with the soldier trying to urge
his horse up the embankment to reach her.
Winslow started to run to the girl's rescue, but no sooner had he
turned than a bullet sang past his ear. Wheeling about he saw the
other cavalryman riding toward him firing as he came.
With lewd brutality calling for vengeance in one direction and a man
firing at his back from the other, Winslow's aversion to bloodshed
became nil; and, aiming cool, he began firing at the approaching
officer.
It must have been the horse that got the bullet, for with the third
shot mount and rider somersaulted upon the macadam.
Without compunction, Winslow turned and sprinted down the roadway.
He saw Ethel dashing across the field, hurdling the cotton rows. The
officer was racing down the road, seeming away from her, but in
another moment he turned through a gap in the fence and rode down
upon the fleeing woman.
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.
"It's stampeding cavalry," said the sharp-eyed Ethel, "and the
airmen are dropping bombs on them."
The cloud of dust came nearer and nearer until they could see the
swift fall of the deadly missiles from the swooping planes and the
havoc wrought in the straggling ranks by the showers of pellets from
the shrapnel exploding above their heads.
When the foremost of the cavalry troop were perhaps a quarter of a
mile from the observers, a commanding officer, who was riding well
in the lead, wheeled his horse, threw away his jacket, tore off his
white shirt and waived it frantically above his head.
An answering truce flag soon appeared from a plane above and the
jaded horsemen, riding up, drew rein and waited.
The truce plane now swooped low and dropped a message fastened to a
white cloth. A soldier caught it and brought it to the officer, who
signalled assent.
Orders were called along the line, and the men filed by and piled
their weapons in an inglorious heap.
After this most of the lazy circling planes rose and made off to the
left, while a few assigned to guard duty circled above the
retreating cavalry, as they moved off slowly in the opposite
direction.
Two belated members of the troop, who had lost their horses, flung
themselves down to rest for a moment in the lengthening shadow of
the oak tree.
"Oh Gawd!" said one, as he panted and mopped his forehead. "Oh Gawd!
I was scared! That damned shrapnel bursting right over us and no
chance to fight back or get away. It ain't no fair fighting like
that--you can't get at 'em."
"They've tricked us, they have," returned his companion. "Our own
airmen's up in Nebraska chasing the Japs that gave us the slip this
morning, and here these damn hawks come swooping in. I reckon it's
reinforcements from Japan. The transports that brought the first
bunch must have been back and got another load, and this time it
seems to be regular soldiers--here to kill--the others were just
decoys."
"No, they ain't exactly decoys; they're here to stay and raise
families, and damned if that ain't what I'm going to do, if I ever
get out of this. Gawd! our loss must be something awful, and they're
at it yet. Look! see 'em over there by Beaumont like a flock of
crows. The bunch that got us was just a few of them."
For a time both soldiers eyed the distant fighting.
"When I get out of this," continued the first speaker; "when I get
out, I'm going to join the Regenerationists."
"What's that; peace cranks?"
"Yep; but it's more than that, it's health cranks and temperance
cranks, and moral cranks, and socialist cranks, and every other kind
of crank that believes in people being decent and living
happy--health, quiet lives, instead of fighting and robbing
and--boozing and abusing themselves and each other to death."
"Oh, Hell! don't preach just because you're scared," said the other,
getting up.
"Call it preaching if you like, but believe me, I've been getting
letters from the folks back home, and my people ain't such poor
stuff either, if I did join the army, and I want to tell you that
such preaching is getting damn popular lately. This fall's election,
you know, and the way we've been done up here to-day, will have a
lot to do with the outcome."
"We'd better move," said the other, looking up. "That Jap up there
thinks we're going back after our guns."
* * *
With the oil regions again in the hands of the vigilant Japanese,
Winslow and Ethel found escape more perilous and difficult. But on
the third night they succeeded in getting through the lines and
reaching Winslow's confederates, who were awaiting him near St.
Charles, La. From hence they travelled by aeroplane to a secluded
railroadless valley in the heart of the Ozarks.
It was here that the secret printing plant of the _Regenerationist_
had been established. Ethel knew nothing of printing or journalism,
but a place was found for her in the department of circulation.
While news could be received via wireless, the paper and supplies,
as well as the men who went to and fro from the secret printing
plant of the outlawed publication, had to be transported by plane.
Aviators with sufficient skill and daring for the task were hard to
find. Already at home in the air, it was only a few days until Ethel
was driving a plane on a paper route.
The seven hundred miles to Denver she covered one night, returning
the next. She started out with half a ton of papers--seventy-two
thousand copies--which in suitable bundles were dropped by the boy
in the center of the triangular signal fires which local agents
built at night in open fields.
Once she lost her load by a fall in the Kansas River, and once she
ran out of fuel and held up a rich country house at the point of a
pistol and demanded the supply of automobile gasoline.
Worst of all, she was chased one night by a government secret
service plane. Despairing of outflying them, she got and held the
position directly above their craft, while the boy rolled a
two-hundred-pound bale of _Regenerationists_ over on the other's
wing and sent the Federal airmen somersaulting into eternity.
But these stirring times did not last long. With the second Japanese
invasion and the Orientals now established in two widely separated
sections of the country, the authorities at Washington soon acceded
to a truce, and one of the immediate results was abolition of
martial law and re-establishment of a free press.
Throughout the summer, in the rice lands in the South, and the wheat
lands of the North, the Japanese lived, harmless gardeners of their
newly acquired possessions. But their gasoline tanks were full and
they carried sufficient conflagration bombs to have fired every city
from New Orleans to St. Paul, had the truce been broken by American
treachery.
The _Regenerationist_, now removed to St. Louis, was again a
full-sized newspaper. The party in power, supported by the
capitalistic and military classes, preached old-fashioned patriotism
and with martial music and flying flags tried to enthuse the people.
But the terror of the American soldiery in the unfair battle of
Beaumont had gone abroad throughout the land. The people feared the
draft for military service--they feared the firing of the
cities--the poisoning of their water supplies and a hundred other
spectres which in the minds of a degenerate and servile city
population the presence of a successful aerial enemy had inspired.
The reform party of the _Regenerationists_ had by the fortunes of
war achieved a tremendous growth. Their recruits came both from the
better element who had thus been awakened from their lethargy, and
from the cowardly rabble who supported peace because of the terror
in their hearts.
Gerald Stoddard, Chancellor of the University of Illinois, a big
sound man of clean mind and clean body, was chosen as the radical
presidential candidate, and won with an overwhelming majority.
His election meant peace between the warring powers, and strong
likelihood of peace in the world for all time to come. It also meant
other things. It meant the complete inversion of the American policy
and the welcoming of science as the servant of mankind's larger
needs and not merely a flunky to the degenerate, luxury-loving few.
President-elect Stoddard, with masterful hand, began at once the
organization of the new administration. Among the appointees whom he
early announced was that of Stanley Winslow, to the position of
Secretary of Public Health.
In his telegram of acceptance, Winslow said:
"In signifying my intention of accepting the position of Secretary
of Public Health in your Cabinet, I wish to say that it will be my
sole purpose to prove myself possessed of the larger patriotism
which would defend our race against retrogression and annihilation,
not by such antiquated and inefficient methods as immigration
restriction or mechanical warfare, but by the improvement of the
race itself."
And Ethel, too, sent a telegram. It read:
PROFESSOR AND MADAME OSHIMA,
JAPANESE OCCUPATION,
SOUTH DAKOTA.
As soon as travel is freely established come and visit us. When are
the children coming over?
ETHEL CALVERT WINSLOW,
Care the _Regenerationist_.
St. Louis, Mo.
But of Komoru she said not a word. She couldn't forget the
unfathomable look in his eyes. At times she even argued with herself
that the poor fellow had loved her, but had feared to express
himself because he believed (as he had stated in his scientific
essays) that inter-racial marriages were uneugenic and hence
immoral.