She ran to us.
“Take his other side,” I told her. “Keep on your feet, Red, and we’ll make the sneak OK.”
The bullet was too freshly in him to slow him up yet, though his right arm was out of commission. We ran down the back street to the corner. We had pursuers before we made it. Curious faces looked at us in the street. A policeman a block away began to move our way. The girl helping O’Leary on one side, me on the other, we ran half a block away from the copper, to where I had left the automobile Jack and I had used. The street was active by the time I got the machinery grinding and the girl had Red stowed safely in the back seat. The copper sent a yell and a high bullet after us. We left the neighborhood.
I didn’t have any special destination yet, so, after the necessary first burst of speed, I slowed up a little, went around lots of corners, and brought the bus to rest in a dark street beyond Van Ness Avenue.
Red was drooping in one corner of the back, the girl holding him up, when I screwed around in my seat to look at them.
“Where to?” I asked.
“A hospital, a doctor, something!” the girl cried. “He’s dying!”
I didn’t believe that. If he was, it was his own fault. If he had had enough gratitude to take me along with him as a friend I wouldn’t have had to shoot him so I could go along as nurse.
“Where to, Red?” I asked him, prodding his knee with a finger.
He spoke thickly, giving me the address of the Stockton Street hotel.
“That’s no good,” I objected. “Everybody in town knows you bunk there, and if you go back, it’s lights out for yours. Where to?”