it.

Sam was swinging when the glitter began and he connected before the gun
fired. There was a sort of squashy, smacking sound and the
reddish-haired man lay down quietly in the road.

"Migawd!" said Sam blankly. "This was the fella in front of the bank!
He's one of those robbers!"

He stared. There was a loud crashing in the brushwood. The accident had
happened at the edge of some woodland, and Sam did not need a high I.Q.
to know that the friends of the red-haired man must be on the way.

A second later, he saw them. Rosie was just getting out of the car then.
She was very pale and there wasn't time to tell her to get started up if
possible and away from there.

One of the two running men was carrying a canvas bag with the words BANK
OF DUNNSVILLE on it.

* * * * *

The men came at Sam, meanwhile expressing opinions of the state of
things, of Sam, of the Cosmos--of everything but the weather--in terms
even more reprehensible than the first man had used.

They saw the reddish-haired man lying on the ground. One of them--he'd
come out into the road behind the truck and was running toward
Sam--jerked out a pistol. He was about to use it on Sam at a range of
something like six feet when there was a peculiar noise behind him. It
was a sort of hollow _klunk_ which, even at such a time, needed to have
attention paid to it. He jerked his head around to see.

The _klunk_ had been made by Rosie's monkey wrench, falling imperatively
on the head of the second man to come out of the woods. She had carried
it to use on Sam, but she used it instead on a total stranger. He fell
down and lay peacefully still.

Then Sam swung a second time, at the second man to draw a pistol on him.

Then there was only the sweet singing of birds among the trees and the
whirrings and other insect-noises of creatures in the grass and
brushwood.

Presently there were other noises, but they were made by Rosie. She
wept, hanging onto Sam.

He unwound her arms from around his neck and thoughtfully went to the
back of the truck and got out some phone wire and his pliers. He
fastened the three strangers' hands together behind them, and then their
feet, and he piled them in the back of the light truck, along with the
money they had stolen.

They came to, one by one, and Sam explained severely that they must
watch their language in the presence of a lady. The three were so dazed,
though, by what had befallen th