“Yes.”
“Go git it!”
He sprang for the passage, where the weapon still lay beside his discarded blanket. As he moved he heard a badly balanced stone outside grate under the weight of a moving body.
In a bounding rush he was across the open cavern and between the bowlders. With a swoop he snatched up his gun. His clutching hand closed with one finger inside the trigger-guard.
Before he realized that he was pressing the little curved lever, the gun jumped violently backward. A thundering report smashed out. Powder-gas stung his throat. The firearm fell with a sullen clack on the stones beside his feet.
Vaguely his deafened ears received the echo of the shot roaring along the farther wall of the Traps, a mile away. He felt, rather than heard, something fall among the rocks outside.
Grabbing the gun again, he slipped forward to the entrance. At the corners of the upstanding bowlders he halted short, staring at a huddled form which had collapsed among the prone blocks beyond.
Only the head and upper torso of the stranger were visible, his lower body and legs lying behind a slanting stone. But clear in the sunlight showed a wan, pinched young face, swarthy-skinned, with close-cropped black hair. Along the stone under the head crept a red trickle.
Suddenly Douglas was thrown aside. From behind him Marion darted, wild-eyed. From her pale lips broke a sharp cry: “Steve!”
Across the stones she struggled. Beside the youth she dropped. Then she turned to Douglas a face startling in its white wrath.