"I can't! I can't!" he said helplessly.
He was leaden flesh, without the power to move. At his words Jack glanced back to see a dropped jaw and glassy, staring eyes.
"You are suffering!" exclaimed Jack. "Are you hit?"
"No!" Prather managed to say, and reached out for his rifle in clumsy desperation, as if he were feeling for it in the dark.
"Take your time!" said Jack encouragingly, as one would to a victim of stage fright. "There isn't any danger for the moment, while advantage of position is with us—the sun over our shoulders and in their faces."
The lumps around the water-hole grew smaller. Evidently, as a result of the lesson, they were creeping backward on their stomachs to a less exposed position. Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant play of light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine on which they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rim of the pasturage basin.
"So, that's it!" he said to Firio.
Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flank under cover of the arroyo.
"We shall have to respond in kind!" said Jack.
He left his hat where his head had been and began crawling along the side of the arroyo, but paused to call to Prather, who, now that no bullets were flying, was trying the mechanism of his rifle with a somewhat steadier hand: