The next instant, with a quick, eager cry of vengeance, the girl pushed the rock from her with great force, and with bated breath leaned forward to watch its descent.
It shot down the side of the gulch until it struck a mass of rock that jutted from the main wall, and then, glancing off like a bomb, it went straight down like a descending cannon ball.
The wild cry of the Thugs as they attempted to dodge the singular missile of destruction reached the listener’s ears, and then came the terrible landing on the canyon road.
“Missed!” cried the girl, shrinking back with bitter disappointment written on her face.
She looked again and saw the cavalcade ride from the spot where their leader had barely escaped with his life, but springing erect she hurled after them the words we have already recorded.
“The next time, monster, my missile will strike and kill!”
Then, leaving Tom Terror to anathematize her to his heart’s content, she hurried away.
“Hal will come to the cave by-and-bye. He will not regret the failure of my attack on the Canyon Terror, for he says that he intends to hang the villain some day.”
As the girl glided through the forest that fringed the top of the canyon, the land sloped gradually, and at last she reached a ravine through which a stream had evidently poured its waters in days unremembered even by the oldest red inhabitants of Colorado.
Dropping into this fissure the girl crept toward the canyon, and disappeared all at once in a dark opening which was almost concealed by a network of half-dead vines.