He lay upon his face for a moment, as if stunned,
and then rose to his knees. An instant too late Graham's men saw his
ruse when his leveled rifle gleamed in the sunshine. The speed of their
pursuit was their undoing. Trying to catch themselves so that they might
use their rifles, or fling themselves upon the ground, they brought
themselves into a brief but deadly interval of inaction, and in that
flash one of the men went down under Alan's first shot. Before he could
fire again the second had flattened himself upon the earth, and swift as
a fox Alan was on his feet and racing for the kloof. Mary stood with her
back against the huge rock, gasping for breath, when he joined her. A
bullet sang over their heads with its angry menace. He did not return
the fire, but drew the girl quickly behind the rock.
"He won't dare to stand up until the others join him," he encouraged
her. "We're beating them to it, little girl! If you can keep up a few
minutes longer--"
She smiled at him, even as she struggled to regain her breath. It seemed
to her there was no way of descending into the chaos of rock between the
gloomy walls of the kloof, and she gave a little cry when Alan caught
her by her hands and lowered her over the face of a ledge to a
table-like escarpment below. He laughed at her fear when he dropped down
beside her, and held her close as they crept back under the shelving
face of the cliff to a hidden path that led downward, with a yawning
chasm at their side.
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