"Well, so'll you," Dave told him; "but if you go crowdin' up without cover somebody'll have to pack you home. Have sense! And lay down. You're so darn big you'll stop something if you keep standin' up!"
Angus dropped beside him in a little hollow, and a bullet droned through the space his body had just occupied.
"Told you so," Rennie grunted. "There's one man up there savvies downhill shootin'. If I could—" The gun in his hand leaped twice so quickly that the reports almost blended. "Don't believe I touched him. Outa practice with a belt gun. Dark besides. Scatter some shot around near the top."
Angus used half a dozen shells, guessing as best he could. A shot or two came back. Rennie suddenly turned loose both his guns in a fusillade, and for an instant Angus saw or thought he saw moving figures silhouetted against the sky on the hill's rim. At these, he let go both barrels. Dave, swinging out the empty cylinders of his guns, swore.
"Darn 'f I b'lieve we've touched hide nor hair. They got horses up there. What darn fools we was to camp down in this bottom. There they go now."
Angus could hear the faint drumming of hoofs over the hill. There was nothing to be done about it. Disgusted they went back to their blankets, but not to sleep, and with dawn they returned to investigate.
An endeavor had been made to tear out the wall of the ditch, and above it a hole had been started, apparently with intent to use powder. A shot there would have split off a section of the precipitous bank, and brought it down, trees and all, into the ditch. Angus, surveying these things with lowering brow, saw Rennie stoop and pick up something.
"What have you got there?" the latter asked.
Without a word Rennie handed him an old, stag-handled jack-knife. Angus knew it very well. He himself had given it to his brother, Turkey.
Angus stared at the knife, at first blankly and then with swiftly blackening brow. He heard Dave's voice as from a distance.