Now it had flashed upon him that it was somehow an outgrowth of the old robbery attempt—and if that were true as high a price lay on the girl's head as upon his own. She was out there alone and in all likelihood unarmed.
Jerry O'Keefe broke into a cold sweat of panic—and he sat with his ears strained for a pistol shot—a shout—any indication that might call him across the moonlight zone beyond the door to her defense.
But the stillness of the midsummer night had settled again, except for the voices of the whippoorwill and the katydid.
By this time, he tried to reassure himself, Alexander had made her way down into the gorge and was beyond the touch of danger.
But that was not true. The girl had need to move with such silence as should break no twig and rustle no shrub. She must twist along a course that avoided the patches of moonlight, weaving her slow way in and out. Deliberation now was hard, but it would mean greater and more effective haste later on. She had even paused, crouching, with inheld breath, at a spot from which she could watch the door of the elevator, until Jerry had made his dash. With a heart swollen and strained by dread almost to bursting, she had seen him shoot across the exposed area and burst through the door—and she had heard the fusilade that resented his escape.
Or was it escape? He had plunged through the dark opening much as a falling man might go. But now safe, wounded or dead, he was inside and they could not reach him, so it behooved her to use wary care to the end that she might bring him help.
But as Alexander came to the two large boulders between which she meant to start down into the gorge she was arrested by a flicker of light there. The rock shielded from view the man who seemed to be kindling a pine torch, but the flare had warned her in time to make her crouch low and consider her course. That path which she had chosen was cut off.
Then, low and guarded voices stole across to her with the light.
"War's ther gal? She didn't git inside too, did she?"
"No, 'pears like she's done hid away—but I reckon they'll diskiver her afore she gits far."