"Pull when you want to?" he called.
The manipulators of the traps seemed to desire to test him. There was an exasperating delay and some questions; then the traps were sprung with startling suddenness.
Merriwell's quick ear was alert. He wheeled as if on a pivot, killed the left bird and the right one. Then dropped in another shell with a slowness that set Bart Hodge wild, and killed the third bird, which had gone off at a difficult tangent, at a distance of at least sixty yards!
"Come on!" grated Defarge, almost beside himself with anger and disappointment. "The devil can't beat him! Let's get out of here!"
"Right!" said Pike, also turning wrathfully away. Badger seemed turned to a statue.
Then again the unexpected happened. A sophomore, who was known to be an intimate friend of Morton Agnew, by seeming accident fired off a gun with which he had been monkeying. Agnew, who had, unnoticed, wormed his way into Merriwell's crowd during the excitement of the shooting-contest, fell to the ground with a cry, as if shot, knocking Harry Rattleton over as he did so.
The shells which Harry had been so carefully guarding were scattered on the ground, and seemed likely to be stepped on and lost in the excitement that followed.
Agnew flounced and threshed about, crying out that he was shot. He was anxiously lifted up, and on his face was seen a drop of blood, which had come from a cut recently made.
"One shot went in right there!" he cried. "I think there are others! Get me into a carriage quick!"
A half-dozen young fellows ran for the nearest carriage, toward which Agnew was conducted as rapidly as possible. Harry Rattleton seemed dazed, and began to look about on the ground as the crowd thinned out there, Merriwell hurried to him.