An ominous silence lay about us. I felt sure that the scoundrels were crawling up along the ditch, and told her this. She nodded. Minutes passed.
At one point, about two hundred yards out, there was a spot where the saw-palmettoes and bay bushes thinned to almost nothing. Sooner or later the enemy would have to cross this, and I watched it without blinking because it would offer our best—if not, indeed, last—chance to hold them. So when finally a stooping figure showed itself I opened a vigorous fire. He drew back, or fell back, and the silence again enveloped us, to be shattered an instant later by a fusillade of shots that made the air thick with crackling whines. The location of our fort was known.
"Down, down!" I yelled.
"I am," she answered, obeying as the best of soldiers. "I'll load for you!"
We were being showered with lead by now, and between the wasplike things speeding overhead and their "sput-sput" as they hit the logs, I dared expose no more than my eyes and forehead while emptying rifle after rifle. In the fleeting movement of handing one down and taking the other I saw Doloria sitting near my feet, with several opened boxes of cartridges on the ground beside her. We had plenty of ammunition, so I did not wait for human targets but fired rapidly into every probable place of concealment—just hoping.
This must have begun to touch them up, for one now made a dash across the open space and dived into good cover, from which he started an instant reply to me. There had been only time for a quick shot at him, as the opening was scarcely ten feet wide. Another tried and made it, but the third stumbled. Whether he accidentally fell or was wounded, I had no way of knowing, yet he was able, at least, to continue the fight because there seemed to be no let up in their volume of fire. Then, to my chagrin, a fourth got across, and, following him, the last three tried together—successfully.
In the best of conditions these men would have been very hard to hit, yet I offer no excuses. My aim, of course, had greatly suffered. Disregard for the nicest accuracy in marksmanship may be expected when an enemy is pouring a hundred shots a minute at a certain point, and you happen to be that point.
Again their rifles became silent. There seemed, indeed, no reason to keep them speaking, as the road to the Oasis was clear. When the trees back of us should be reached more shots would ring out, closer, always getting closer; eventually would come the hand-to-hand fight, and then—forgetfulness. Yet I swore with a burning rage in my heart that whoever of those fiends were left to gloat over their victory would remember until their dying day the price I had collected for it.
"Where are they?" Doloria asked, in a voice that trembled slightly. The strain of waiting below was greater than that of seeing what went on outside.
Grimly I told her how matters stood with us, and we, also, became silent.