“Henry!” She was looking straight down into 355 the valley, and laid her hand on de Spain’s shoulder. “Is there anything moving on the ridge––over there––see––just east of Sassoon’s ranch-house?”
De Spain, his eyes bent on the point Nan indicated, drew her forward to a dip in the trail which, to one stretched flat, afforded a slight protection. He made her lie down, and just beyond her refuge chose a point where the path, broadening a little and rising instead of sloping toward the outer edge, gave him a chance to brace himself between two rocks. Flattened there like a target in mid-air, he threw his hat down to Nan and, resting on one knee, waited for the shot that should tumble him down El Capitan or betray the man bent on killing him. Squalls of wind, sweeping into the Gap and sucked upward on the huge expanse of rock below, tossed his hair and ballooned his coat as he buttoned it. Another bullet, deliberately aimed, chipped the rock above him. Nan, agonizing in her suspense, cried out she must join him and go with him if he went. He steadied her apprehension and with a few words reminded her, as a riflewoman, what a gamble every shot at a height such as they occupied, and with such a wind, must be. He reminded her, too, it was much easier to shoot down than up, but all the time he was searching for the flash that should 356 point the assassin. A bullet struck again viciously close between them. De Spain spoke slowly: “Give me your rifle.” Without turning his head he held out his hand, keeping his eyes rigidly on the suspicious spot on the ridge. “How far is it to that road, Nan?”
She looked toward the faint line that lay in the deep shadows below. “Three hundred yards.”
“Nan, if it wasn’t for you, I couldn’t travel this country at all,” he remarked with studious unconcern. “Last time I had no ammunition––this time, no rifle––you always have what’s needed. How high are we, Nan?”
“Seven hundred feet.”
“Elevate for me, Nan, will you?”
“Remember the wind,” she faltered, adjusting the sight as he had asked.
With the cautioning words she passed the burnished weapon, glittering yet with the rain-drops, into his hand. A flash came from the distant ridge. Throwing the rifle to his shoulder, de Spain covered a hardly perceptible black object on the trail midway between Sassoon’s ranch-house and a little bridge which he well remembered––he had crossed it the night he dragged Sassoon into town. It seemed a long time that he pressed the rifle back against his shoulder and held his eye along the barrel. He was wondering as he 357 covered the crouching man with the deadly sight which of his enemies this might be. He even slipped the rifle from his shoulder and looked long and silently at the black speck before he drew the weapon back again into place. Then he fired before Nan could believe he had lined the sights. Once, twice, three times his hand fell and rose sharply on the lever, with every mark of precision, yet so rapidly Nan could not understand how he could discover what his shots were doing.
The fire came steadily back, and deliberately, without the least intimation of being affected by de Spain’s return. It was a duel shorn of every element of equality, with an assassin at one end of the range, and a man flattened half-way up the clouds against El Capitan at the other, each determined to kill the other before he should stir one more foot.
Far above, an eagle, in morning flight, soared majestically out from a jutting crag and circled again and again in front of El Capitan, while the air sang with the whining dice that two gamblers against death threw across the gulf between them. Nan, half hidden in her trough of rock, watched the great bird poise and wheel above the deadly firing, and tried to close her eyes to the figure of de Spain above her, fighting for her life and his own.