CHAPTER VI.
A RUNNING SKIRMISH.
“What’s that?” involuntarily exclaimed Nick, as he tried to make out the nature of the object.
“Looks like a stale doughnut,” offered Patsy Garvan. “But the old guy who dropped it is all in just the same.”
“Adil!” called out Jefferson Arnold.
“Hush!” warned Nick Carter. “Keep quiet till we see.”
“I do see,” insisted the impetuous millionaire. “That’s Adil, and I——”
“I’ll save him,” interrupted Nick. “But we’ve got to wait till we see what is behind those trees.”
Jefferson Arnold recognized the justice of this, and restrained himself from dashing out into the open, as he would have liked to do.
Adil seemed to have been released from his hypnotic trance by the jar of the rifle report. He stood still and looked about him with a light of intelligence in his eyes that had not been there before.
For a minute he seemed uncertain which way to go. Then, with a half-uttered ejaculation, he sprang over the body of the medicine man and the snake, and raced in the direction of the tree behind which Chick was still crouching.