Whether the sniper had seen this move, or whether he himself was tired of inaction, another bullet now pinged hard and viciously against the boulder itself. This just suited Helston Varne. He was able in that moment’s flash to locate the lurking place of their enemy, and himself, lying flat, was able to get his piece forward, and cover it. With the aid of a loophole-like formation of the stones he felt that he could not miss.
“Work the dummy trick, Coates,” he called back, in a low voice. “Draw his fire somehow. I’ve got the spot exactly covered, and—I think we shall soon be on our road again.”
“All right,” came back the answer. “I’ll give a cough when I’m all ready to show the lure.”
It was a strange drama this duel between hidden foes, and for its setting one of the wildest scenes of wild Nature. The mountain side opposite, rising in huge terraced cliffs, the ledges affording sparse hold for a scanty growth of pistachio shrub. Beneath, the stones and boulders of the now dry watercourse, and behind, the craggy entrance to the great tangi. No vegetation either, save coarse dry grass, no sign of life, unless a cloud of kites, wheeling in circles high overhead, against the blue. And, facing each other, unseen, two units of humanity lay there, each bent on relieving the human race of one. Then Varne Coates coughed.
But simultaneously, with the echoing roar from the cliff face, Helston pressed trigger. The sound from opposite was not that of a missile striking a hard substance.
“Got him,” he said, quietly. “Yes. He’s done. I could see it plainly. He got it just under the chin, as he was watching the effect of his pull-off.”
“The effect of his pull-off,” said Coates, “is that he’s got the range plumb by now, and if anything had been inside the boot I stuck out, its owner would have gone very lame for life. Look hereat it.” And he held it up showing a hole neatly drilled just above the ankle. “Sure you’ve got him though?”
“So sure that—Well, look.”
Helston had slid down from his coign of vantage, and now deliberately walked forth into the open. Here he stood for a few moments, gazing up at the cliff.
“That’s practical faith at any rate,” said Coates, grimly. “Yes, you certainly must have ‘got him,’ or he’d have got you by this. Still, it’s risky. There might have been two of them.”