“If she didn’t pot me while I was doin’ it!” he objected.
Benson looked round again.
“Here, we can up-end this stone,” he said, “and it will screen you from her bullets while you turn the trick. But we’ve got to be quick about it.”
“Quick’s the word! Cody’s crowd is comin’; I know it by the way she jest sets down thar behind that umbreller.”
They up-ended the stone, a thing easy to do when the man-ape applied his immense strength to the task.
Believing that this would screen him, Gorilla Jake now attacked the stones at the rear of the nest, which Benson pointed out. It was a wonderful exhibition of brute strength; the muscles on his arms and shoulders corded themselves up like knotted ropes, his breast heaved up and down convulsively, sweat rained from his face; but he moved the heaviest of the stones, and with a great surge of his writhing body threw it to one side. The next, which had lain under it, was not so difficult, and a hole had been opened.
Through it they pulled themselves; then slid their bodies down the slope on the other side.
They now had the rocky hill between themselves and the terrible “woman” with the umbrella.
Gorilla Jake bounded to his feet like a huge ball of live rubber.
“Now fer the tall hills!” he panted.