"Run, Mr. Man! Run as if the Old Harry were after you, and don't forget to keep that rifle pointed away from the camp. If it goes off you're liable to get hurt. Get out!"
The mountaineer, as Hippy released him, sprang away a few paces, then, suddenly whirling, fired point blank at Hippy.
Expecting this very move, Lieutenant Wingate had dropped down the instant he saw the man turning, and the bullet went over Hippy's head, and incidentally over the heads of the Overland Riders in the camp a few yards to the rear.
Lieutenant Wingate was unarmed, his revolver being in its holster on his saddle, so all he could do was to duck. His experience as a fighting aviator in France had made Hippy somewhat callous to bullets, as well as an expert in ducking. In the present instance, Lieutenant Wingate made so many ducks and dives, side-slips and Immelman turns that the mountaineer, crack shot that he was, found himself unable to score a hit. The darkness, too, prevented his getting a good sight at the man he was trying to shoot.
Back in the camp the rest of the Overland outfit were lying flat on the ground, just as they used to do in France when they heard a shell coming, which might be due to land somewhere near them. Not one of them had a weapon handy, nor would they have dared use them had weapons been at hand, because there was no telling where Hippy Wingate was at any given second. That, too, was what was troubling the mountaineer.
At the first shot, Washington Washington had forsaken the harmonica and dived head first into the bushes where he lay, face down, a finger stuck in either ear.
Hippy's floundering finally ceased and the mountaineer could not find him. Believing, perhaps, that he had hit his victim, the fellow began shooting into the camp of the Overlanders.
"I'm not going to lie here and let that fellow kill us all," declared Grace Harlowe, springing up and starting away on a zigzagging run. "Keep down, all of you. I'll fetch weapons," she called back.
Tom Gray, however, had forestalled her, and, leaping to his feet, had run back to the tethering ground, where the ponies and their equipment had been placed for the night, to fetch rifles.
Tom and Grace were back in a few moments, but instead of stepping out into the open space where the tents were pitched and the campfire was burning, they separated and crept around opposite sides of the camp, over which bullets continued to whistle at intervals.