"Prather, if you could manage to get up there beside Firio and join him in pouring out a magazine full at the right moment, it would help! If not, put your hat up there beside mine. You can do that without exposing yourself."
Jack's tone was that of one who urges a tired man to take a few more steps, or an invalid without any appetite to try another sup of broth. It had no hint of irony.
"No matter," said Firio. "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there is only two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharper than satire; that of an Indian shrug over a negligible quantity. It started Prather on all fours laboriously toward him.
"I am going to the turn in the arroyo that commands the next turn," Jack explained. "When I whistle you empty your magazines. Keep your heads down and fire fast, no matter if not accurately, so as to disturb their aim at me!"
"Sí!" said Firio. "I know!" No one could deny that he was having a very good time making war in the company of Señor Jack. "Yes, Mister Prather," he added, when, after toiling painfully on his belly for the few feet he had to go, Prather lay with his stark face near Firio's; a face strangely like that of John Wingfield, Sr. when he saw Jasper Ewold from the drawing-room doorway. "For your life, Mister Prather! Sí! Up a little more! Chin high as mine, so! Eye on sight, so!"
Prather obeyed in an abyssmal sort of shame which, for the time being, conquered his fear, though not his palsy; for his rifle barrel trembled on its rest.
Meanwhile, Jack had crept to the bend in the arroyo. He was listening. It would not do to show his head as a warning of his presence. Faintly he heard men moving in the sand, moving slowly and cautiously. At the moment he chose as the right one, with rifle cocked and finger on trigger, he gave his signal. Then he sprang to the top of the bank, fully exposed to the marksmen at the water-hole. For no half measure would do. He must have a full view of the bottom of the next bend. There he saw two crawling figures. He fired twice and dropped down with three or four stinging whispers in his ears and a second volley overhead as he was under cover. Again he sprang up over the bank in the temptation to see the result of his aim. One of the would-be flankers lay prostrate and still, face downward. The other was disappearing beyond the second bend.
"Seven, now!" he thought miserably, in comprehension of the whole business as ridicule in human savagery. "They won't trouble us again immediately. They will wait on darkness and thirst," he concluded; and called, as he turned back, to Firio: "It worked like a charm, O son of the sun! They could not fire at all straight with your bullets flying about their heads, disturbing their—" His speech ended at sight of Prather, half rolling, half tumbling down the slope, his hands over his face, while he uttered a prolonged moan.
"Bullet hit a rock under sand!" said Firio, as Jack hastened to assist Prather, who had come to a halt at the very bottom of the arroyo and lay gasping on his side. Jack took hold of Prather's wrists to draw his hands away from the wound.
"My God! Out here, like a rat in a trap!" Prather groaned. "When I have all life before me! In sight of millions and power—a rat in a trap out on this damnable desert, as if I were of no more account than a rancher!"