“It’s Louie,” Morrison whispered. “I thought he was too sick to move. I’ll bet he was putting it all on. What’s he doing? I could hit him from here.”
“Don’t shoot,” said Lang. “Keep your eye on him, though, and don’t let him get near the engines.”
He slipped down the side of the valley and out to the beach. He had a vague idea that Louie was perhaps delirious with incipient pneumonia. He silently crossed in the dinghy, swung over the Chita’s rail, and peeped in the cabin door.
The young gunman had the trap of the fuel hold up, and the cap off one of the big gasoline tanks. He jerked his head up instantly.
“Stop there, doc!” he yelled shrilly. “Hands up—up high. Come another step nearer and I’ll shoot into this gas tank and blow us all to hell.”
Lang now perceived that Louie had a pistol—Carroll’s black automatic, he was sure—not pointing toward him, but with the muzzle directed into the tank below. He put his hands up instantly. He did not remember whether he had a gun in his pocket or not. He realized that Louie had the undeniable drop this time. That gun flash would explode the Chita like a load of dynamite.
“Don’t be a fool, Louie!” he tried to expostulate. “I’ve no gun. You don’t want to blow yourself up, too, do you?”
“Want to make a deal, then?” the boy cried back. “I’ve got the stones. I’ve put them where you’d never find them, not in a thousand years. What do you say? A fifty-fifty split. Kick in now, or up we go!”
At that instant Morrison, misunderstanding the situation, fired from the bluff. Like an echo of the shot, Louie’s pistol exploded into the fuel tank. For one instant Lang saw death. His heart absolutely stood still.
But there was no burst of fire. Louie sprang up, his shirt front suddenly streaming red, wheeled round and fell, and as a dying snake strikes, his pistol exploded—twice—three times—the bullets crashing into the floor, and the flashes setting fire to a matting rug.