Another heavy report interrupted Slone. The bullet missed, but Slone made a pretense, a convulsive flop, as if struck. "Get the rifle! Quick!" he called. But Lucy misunderstood his ruse to deceive Cordts. She thought he had been hit again. She ran to the fallen Wildfire and jerked the rifle from its sheath. Cordts had begun to climb round a ledge, evidently a short cut to get down and across. Hutchinson saw the rifle and yelled to Cordts. The horse-thief halted, his dark face gleaming toward Lucy. When Lucy rose the coat fell from her nude shoulders. And Slone, watching, suddenly lost his agony of terror for her and uttered a pealing cry of defiance and of rapture. She swept up the rifle. It wavered. Hutchinson was above, and Cordts, reaching up, yelled for help. Hutchinson was reluctant. But the stronger force dominated. He leaned down--clasped Cordts's outstretched hands, and pulled. Hutchinson bawled out hoarsely. Cordts turned what seemed a paler face. He had difficulty on the slight footing. He was slow. Slone tried to call to Lucy to shoot low, but his lips had drawn tight after his one yell. Slone saw her white, rounded shoulders bent, with cold, white face pressed against the rifle, with slim arms quivering and growing tense, with the tangled golden hair blowing out. Then she shot. Slone's glance shifted. He did not see the bullet strike up dust. The figures of the men remained the same--Hutchinson straining, Cordts.... No, Cordts was not the same! A strange change seemed manifest in his long form. It did not seem instinct with effort. Yet it moved. Hutchinson also was acting strangely, yelling, heaving, wrestling. But he could not help Cordts. He lifted violently, raised Cordts a little, and then appeared to be in peril of losing his balance. Cordts leaned against the cliff. Then it dawned upon Slone that Lucy had hit the horse-thief. Hard hit! He would not--he could not let go of Hutchinson. His was a death clutch. The burly Hutchinson slipped from his knee-hold, and as he moved Cordts swayed, his feet left the ledge, he hung, upheld only by the tottering comrade. What a harsh and terrible cry from Hutchinson! He made one last convulsive effort and it doomed him. Slowly he lost his balance. Cordts's dark, evil, haunting face swung round. Both men became lax and plunged, and separated. The dust rose from the rough steps. Then the dark forms shot down--Cordts falling sheer and straight, Hutchinson headlong, with waving arms--down and down, vanishing in the depths. No sound came up. A little column of yellow dust curled from the fatal ledge and, catching the wind above, streamed away into the drifting clouds of smoke. CHAPTER XX A darkness, like the streaming clouds overhead, seemed to blot out Slone's sight, and then passed away, leaving it clearer. Lucy was bending over him, binding a scarf round his shoulder and under his arm. "Lin! It's nothing!" she was saying, earnestly. "Never touched a bone!"