Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/255

 opened the door, for he wanted every chance.

The first message that flashed to his brain was that it was very dark outside. The second was that a great malletlike hand had descended unexpectedly on his own, out of this darkness, and had sent his revolver rattling across the boards of the cabin floor. His next was the knowledge of clinching and writhing and struggling with a desperately fighting and heaving hulk that for a moment bore him back over his door-sill.

Then came a brief and bitter battle for what seemed to be a short-barreled, heavy-butted revolver in one of the malletlike hands. The revolver fell away from them both in the hot and stifling blackness of the cabin, but still they clawed and panted and writhed from side to side.

"The lights!" cried the warning girl through the darkness.

Then came the sound of the door slammed shut, and the girl again crying to McKinnon to turn on the light. He dropped low and twisted sharply, tearing himself loose from the apelike arms.

"The light—turn on the light!" still cried the helpless girl, as though apprehensive of some danger he could not fathom.

McKinnon, still panting and shaking, sprang