"Chunky!" gasped the lads in one voice.
Cravath made a move to level his weapon at the boy who had interfered
with his plans thus unexpectedly.
"You stop that, now! I've got six bullets in this gun. If you get me
excited I may press too hard on the trigger, and--well, maybe you'll
think you've stepped into a hornets' nest. Drop those pistols!"
The muzzle of the repeating rifle never wavered. Behind the sights,
the eyes of Stacy Brown had contracted into two narrow slits.
The desperadoes hesitated, measuring their chances shrewdly. They
must have considered that these were not worth the taking, for they
permitted their fingers to relax, the weapons falling to the floor
with a clatter.
Chunky lowered his rifle ever so little, and the Pony Riders uttered a
yell of triumph.
For one brief instant Chunky was off his guard. In that second he
lost his prisoners.
With a bound the two men cleared the intervening space that lay
between them and the cliff. They reached it at a point near the
corner of the chamber some distance from where they had attempted to
drive the boys over. Throwing themselves flat on their faces, they
wriggled over the edge and disappeared. A faint splash below, a few
seconds later, told the lads that their desperate assailants had
reached the water.
"They'll drown, they'll drown!" cried Walter.
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