Then Pierre Luzon saw the object of the manoeuvre. Thurston had gained the spot where Don Manuel’s discarded pistol belt was lying, and now he was reaching out with a disengaged hand to grab the gun.
The Frenchman darted forward.
“Keep out of this,” cried Don Manuel, peremptorily, although he was breathing hard.
“Look out! Your gun!” screamed Pierre, as he seized Thurston’s wrist in a vice-like grip.
Just an instant too late, however, for Thurston’s fingers had already closed round the weapon and it went off with a bang.
Pierre dropped to his knees. It was he who had received the bullet—through one of his lungs. But he had wrested the pistol from the treacherous villain’s grasp and now it fell, still smoking, to the ground.
The wounded man coughed a great mouthful of crimson blood on to the slab of rock. Then he recovered himself and raised his head. Thurston and Don Manuel, even in their weakened state, were fighting more desperately than ever, blinded by hate to every sense of danger, and Pierre was just in time to see them slip on some loosened stones and then, still locked in the death clench, go rolling over the edge of the precipice.
“Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!” murmured the Frenchman. He staggered to his feet and without waiting turned and started down the steep trail, stumbling like a drunken man.
At the foot of the zig-zag pathway he gazed helplessly around. He would have pushed his way through the brushwood to seek his beloved chief. Dead! He must be dead. No one could have dropped that sheer three hundred feet onto the cruel jagged rocks below and live. Yet, who knows? A tree might have broken the fall—Don Manuel might still be alive.
Pierre, however, was incapable of further effort. His limbs trembled beneath him, and again he was spitting blood.