“What’s the matter? Hurt?”

“Ye-yes. But wait—I’m a-comin’——”

The light quivered, as if the man behind it were impatient to leap forward. But it remained poised on its own bowlder, shooting at the upper edge of another mass of conglomerate beyond which the girlish voice had spoken. A few seconds later, atop that rough stone, something glinted red-gold in the white glare. Under it rose wide gray eyes, a pale face—the eyes suddenly shut and the face shrank from the blinding beam. Again the gas ray lit up the glowing glory of the red hair.

“All right. Stick there,” commanded the man. A quick twist of the light—then another grind of sliding heels, terminating in a solid bump like the impact of a gun-butt against stone. The white eye now was swinging[16] about at the base of the bowlder, hunting a way around the almost vertical block. A few seconds, and it began staggering over the smaller debris toward one corner.

[16]

“Oh—look out—here’s the critter now!”

With the warning came a swift scramble overhead. The light wheeled and revealed a girlish figure in a torn drab dress swinging itself out—slipping rapidly down—hanging by its hands from the upper edge.

“Hold hard!” snapped the man. “Don’t be silly—he’s a coward, like all cats. He’ll run if you say ‘boo.’ Hang tight a minute. Don’t drop.”

But the girl, dangling with face turned upward and heels a yard or more above the jagged jumble below, sniffed scornfully at his assertion of knowledge. Before he could make two steps toward her she let go. Down she darted in a grayish streak, and on the stones beneath she crumpled.

One sharp moan of pain broke from her. Then, looking upward, she breathed: “Look!”

The light switched up. From the edge above now protruded another head: a flat-nosed, fang-toothed, tawny visage whose eyes flamed green with ferocity and whose snarling jaws writhed in malignant menace.

A startled grunt sounded behind the light. The white eye lifted, hung poised as if held by a hand grown rigid. Beside it, twin tubes of steel centered on that horrid head.

Boomboom! A double flash leaped thundering from the tubes. In a swirl of blue smoke the face of the great cat vanished.

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