“Hold hard!” snapped the man. “Don’t be silly—he’s a coward, like all cats. He’ll run if you say ‘boo.’ Hang tight a minute. Don’t drop.”
But the girl, dangling with face turned upward and heels a yard or more above the jagged jumble below, sniffed scornfully at his assertion of knowledge. Before he could make two steps toward her she let go. Down she darted in a grayish streak, and on the stones beneath she crumpled.
One sharp moan of pain broke from her. Then, looking upward, she breathed: “Look!”
The light switched up. From the edge above now protruded another head: a flat-nosed, fang-toothed, tawny visage whose eyes flamed green with ferocity and whose snarling jaws writhed in malignant menace.
A startled grunt sounded behind the light. The white eye lifted, hung poised as if held by a hand grown rigid. Beside it, twin tubes of steel centered on that horrid head.
Boomboom! A double flash leaped thundering from the tubes. In a swirl of blue smoke the face of the great cat vanished.
The light pitched backward, fell clattering on the rocks. A muffled impact and a sullen thwack of metal told that the man and his gun too had been knocked down by the recoil. Over behind the bowlder something else thudded softly and was still.
But, though dropped, the lantern burned faithfully on. Its ray lit up a pair of high-laced boots, tan corduroys, and a hammerless shotgun sprawling on a slanting bowlder. A second later a broad hand swooped at it and righted it. The gun was lifted, broken at the breech, swiftly reloaded and snapped shut. Then the legs drew up and the light rose, darting at the girl.
She was huddled where she had dropped, but her pale face was alive and her gray eyes wide open. As the glare fell on her she threw up an arm to shield her dark-dilated pupils. Upon the tanned skin of that firm young forearm showed a long red gash.
“Good Lord! You’re badly hurt!” exclaimed the man.