We didn't want to be swamped under that tide of fugitives.
But they took no notice of us. They had thrown away their weapons and
were running for home with eyes distended and nothing in mind but to put
distance between there and the enemy. I jumped out of the car and
seized one man.
"What are you running from? What has happened?" I demanded, holding him
harder the more he struggled.
"Poison gas!" he gasped, and I let him go.
I thought I caught a whiff of the darned stuff then, but that may have
been imagination.
"Poison gas!" I said, returning to the car, and Rene made a fine
exhibition of himself, smothering his head under the foxlined overcoat
and screaming.
He got right down on the floor of the car and lay there huddled and
gasping--which may have been a sensible precaution; I don't know.
There was no time just then to bother with him.
The flukey morning breeze shifted several points. The mist curled
suddenly and began to flow diagonally across our line of cars instead of
toward us, and from one moment to the next you could see straight along
the road for maybe a mile or more. There was a sight worth seeing--
Feisul's cavalry in full rout--running away from ghosts by the look of
it--their formation hardly yet broken, horse and man racing with the
wind and a scattering of unhorsed fugitives streaming behind like a
comet's tail.
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