"Don't you talk!" she retorted. "You look as if Liz had missed her cue, and you'd been through the sawmill!"
And then Garth saw a black sleeve sticking out from behind a rock in the ravine below; and he got down to business. A little sigh of relief escaped him at the sight of his enemies at last. He fired. The shot went wide.
Natalie sank back in her corner, deathly pale; and with a hand over her lips, to keep from crying out. Her part was harder than his.
He called down to her reassuringly. "All right! Only a try-out!"
Further down, a second figure showed briefly, scrambling up the right-hand side of the trough. Garth fired—a fraction of a second too late. He could scarcely credit such nimble agility in a figure so gross. It was Grylls. Thus two of them were accounted for. Searching for the third, he saw the black crown of a hat projecting above a stone on the other side of the ravine. This was an easy shot; he aimed and fired with a savage satisfaction. The hat disappeared; but again he knew, somehow, that his bullet had not found its mark.
At the same moment Grylls won a rock a yard higher up. He was not coming up the bottom of the ravine, but aiming obliquely up the side for the trees high above. Garth, grimly covering his shelter, saw him bob his head around; a bare, cropped, tousled head, like a hiding schoolboy's. Quick as he was with the trigger, Grylls was quicker. The bullet flattened itself harmlessly beyond.
As he shot there was a scramble across the ravine; and he saw the other figure had mounted. The hat, Mabyn's hat, again showed; and he took another shot at it. This time the bullet knocked it spinning off the rifle barrel which upheld it; and in a flash Garth understood how neatly they were fooling him. Each in turn drew his fire, while the other made an advance. He resolved to shoot no more.
Meanwhile the first one he had glimpsed, which must be Mary, had not moved from the middle of the ravine. Some of the stones were moved, and he guessed she had made a permanent shelter there. There was a shot from below, and the bullet spattered itself on the heavy base of rock. Holding his hand, Garth awaited a second shot. He saw a tiny white puff at last, and marked the aperture whence it issued. The bullet hurtled whiningly overhead. Steadying his gun on the edge of the rock, he took careful aim—but the other spoke first. It was a marvellous shot—or a chance one. The bullet splintered the edge of the stone protecting Garth's head, and sang off. A jagged sliver of stone ploughed across the back of his extended hand. He exclaimed as in casual surprise, and his gun exploded harmlessly in the air. He looked at his hand stupidly as at an alien member; then suddenly he understood; and whipping out his handkerchief, bound up the wound, knotting the linen with teeth and fingers.
Up to this moment Garth had been playing a dispassionate game; but he returned to his loophole conscious of a great surge of cold rage against those below. He yearned to get even; but he could wait for it. Mabyn exposed his hat tantalizingly; Grylls shot out a foot, or bobbed up his head—but Garth saved his bullets. He would not even try to pierce the sharpshooters' defenses again. An occasional shot came from there; but never such another as the last.
Finally Grylls changed his tactics. From behind his rock he taunted Garth vilely. The walls of the ravine reverberated horridly with the sound of the sudden human voice.