"I don't agree with you," interrupted the colonel. "Not if you don't forget your table of trajectories." He wrinkled his forehead reminiscently as he warmed to a cherished hobby. "I remember last year when I got me an old ram. Conditions similar to this. Five hundred yards if an inch, and I was shooting down off a ridge. I fixed my leaf sight at five hundred, and held plumb in the vital circle. The point I'm making—"
"You're in danger of having your point proven for you, if we stick around here," Dexter respectfully submitted. He saw the girl looking from one to the other with anxious eyes. "If you don't mind," he finished, "Alison and I think we'd better be striking for cover."
"Come on," agreed the superintendent, and set forward once more towards the nearest strip of timber. He moved at his usual brisk stride, but without undue haste; a calm and dignified man who refuses to be pestered by small annoyances.
As they pushed onward across the plateau, a freezing gust of wind swept down suddenly through the mountain notch, bringing a momentary flutter of snowflakes. "At last!" Devreaux flung back over his shoulder. "The storm will spoil good shooting, but also it'll bury footprints. We'll have to get Crill quickly, before the slate's wiped clean."
"And before he takes on reinforcements," echoed Dexter.
The snow flurry lasted for seconds, and then there followed a brief lull, while the skin of the face seemed to draw tighter with the tension of heavy barometric pressures. The lower atmosphere had grown very still, but higher up Dexter could see the rush and scud of dark clouds breaking around the mountain peaks. His glance traveled aimlessly from one outstanding pinnacle to another, and then wandered down towards the edge of timberline, and reached the top of a knife-edged ridge stretching away to the left. He blinked his eyes, and gazed again, and made out a grouping of elongated objects, like little fingers poked against the skyline. There was no discernible movement. He counted—one—two—three—but at the distance was unable to decide whether the small dots were rocks, or beasts of some sort, or men.
Reaching behind him, he was fumbling at his binocular case, when his ears caught the far-off hum of another bullet. The sound broke through the air in wailing crescendo, reached its highest pitch, and then stopped short with a tearing thump.
Dexter saw Colonel Devreaux halt in mid-stride and look waveringly about him, like a man who had suddenly changed his mind about the direction he wanted to go. For a moment the square-built figure held erect, motionless, and then the sturdy legs bowed weakly and without a word the old man pitched forward and fell upon his face.
Simultaneously, the storm came howling down upon them. Dexter felt the lash of the fiercely driven wind, and as he bowed his head to the blast, the world about him was blotted out in swirling snow.
He plunged forward and dropped upon his knees beside his officer. Devreaux lay on his side, with head and face almost buried in the white drift. The corporal passed his arm under the fallen body, and his fingers were stained by a warm seepage of blood.