“I don’t seem able to make my muscles stop quivering,” Cliff replied, as low as he could. “Here, Tom, you take the rifle.”
Tom extended a hand very slowly toward the weapon; Cliff pushed it slowly toward him. In spite of their inward fear they realized that the bright, tiny disks reflecting the firelight were noting every move; they forced themselves to be deliberate, lest a sudden move, startling that dusky figure above, might cause the animal—or whatever it was—to leap.
The rifle in his hand, Tom made a determined effort to hold his muscles steady. He did not think of his nerves as being unstrung, for he had been told often by Mr. Gray that nerves are only the messengers that take the messages from the mind to the muscles: when the mind sent the wrong messages or was unable to be steady, the muscles were shaken, but not the nerves.
He drew the rifle slowly to him, got his hand onto its stock, lifted it with a deliberate determination not to let the barrel waver.
Using every atom of his will-power to compel his mind to concentrate on what he was going to accomplish, instead of looking at his pictures of what might happen, he managed to gain control of himself.
Then he raised the barrel until its forward sight and its rear sight grew a fine line to the eyes so steadily glowing above, and a trifle to one side of their fire. Cliff, shaking with his disturbed mental condition, and Nicky, anxious and worried, fixed their eyes on those so high up above them and waited, tensely.
“Crack!” the rifle barked, a spurt of flame leaped from its barrel.
“Jump!” cried Tom, leaping away from the fire.
Cliff and Nicky threw themselves away from the fire, for there was a sliding, crackling, scraping sound above the fire, and down came a long, slender, weird looking form, to crash upon the ground just beside the fire.
“Good grief!” cried Nicky. “It isn’t a wildcat—what is it?”