Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/358

 of arm. They were weapons which only too often left the detonation of thirty grains of powder a peril and converted bullet-trajectories into a thing of ever—changing wonder. But he had shown Alicia how to reload each of these rifles. He had also taught her the trick of dislodging a shell when it jammed—for many of the cartridges, after their sea-trip, were still damp and swollen.

But beyond the wavering line of that creek-bank, he determined, no man should advance unchallenged. Above all things, he knew, he had to keep his front clear.

"It's ten to one they won't come at us in force," he explained to the girl crouched at his knees in the rifle-pit. "They won't throw themselves on us until they know what we carry. But we've got to stop that first rush!"

It was a minute or two before she spoke, for a flurry of bullets came whistling and whimpering and quavering close in over their heads. One or two, McKinnon noticed, chugged ominously against the face of his sand—boxes. But most of them went high, foolishly high.

"Couldn't I get to Guariqui?" the girl was asking. "Couldn't I—with a white flag of some sort, to warn them?"

"These devils 'd never let you get twenty feet away. And it would do no good!"