He had progressed some hundred yards when he felt the
earth give way beneath him. He clutched frantically about for
support, but there was none, and with a sickening lunge he
plunged downward into Stygian darkness.
His fall was a short one, and he brought up with a painful
thud at the bottom of a deer pit--a covered trap which the
natives dig to catch their fleet-footed prey.
The pain of his wounds after the fall was excruciating. His
head whirled dizzily. He knew that he was dying, and then all
went black.
When consciousness returned to the mucker it was daylight.
The sky above shone through the ragged hole that his falling
body had broken in the pit's covering the night before.
"Gee!" muttered the mucker; "and I thought that I was
dead!"
His wounds had ceased to bleed, but he was very weak and
stiff and sore.
"I guess I'm too tough to croak!" he thought.
He wondered if the two men would reach Barbara in
safety. He hoped so. Mallory loved her, and he was sure that
Barbara had loved Mallory. He wanted her to be happy. No
thought of jealousy entered his mind. Mallory was her kind.
Mallory "belonged." He didn't. He was a mucker. How would
he have looked training with her bunch. She would have been
ashamed of him, and he couldn't have stood that.
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