Their only chance lay in reaching a patch of woodland that lay a little ways back of the road. Once in its shadows some of them at least might stand a chance of eluding their pursuers.
At a command from their leader, the bandits fired a volley at the officers and then turned and ran toward the woods. A fusillade from the police revolvers followed them, and one of the robbers was shot in the foot and fell. The rest kept on, the fear of capture lending wings to their feet, and three of them reached the woods. One however, was headed off and ran into the open field where the plane had made its landing. He was fleeter than the two heavily built men who were pursuing him, and would have easily outdistanced them had not Phil taken a hand in the game.
Like a panther he was on the trail of the fugitive. The latter turned and saw him coming and redoubled his speed. There was no shaking Phil off however, and he gained rapidly. The man turned and fired at him but the bullet whizzed by harmlessly. The next instant Phil had launched himself on him and the two went to the ground together.
The fall had knocked all the breath out of the robber, and there was little fight left in him. Phil wrenched the revolver out of his grasp, and as Dick came up just then, they bound the robber’s arms together with Dick’s belt, rendering him powerless. Then they helped him to his feet and marching behind him with an occasional prod of the pistol butt in his back when he showed an inclination to balk they came to the police car, in which the wounded robber had already been placed.
“Two of them anyway,” remarked the officer in charge. “That was mighty quick and plucky work on your part, young fellow. He was getting away surely when you put out after him.”
“Do you think there’s any chance of nabbing the rest of them?” inquired Phil.
“If we could have winged them before they got to the woods as we did this fellow,” he said, indicating the wounded thief, “it would have been all right, but once in those thick woods it’s an easy thing to lose sight of them. You can hear that there isn’t much shooting going on just now. That means that our fellows can’t find any targets to shoot at.”
His prediction was verified when half an hour later his comrades came straggling back without additional prisoners.