After lying for a time on the matting at one end of the tent, he rose and turned the lamp out; the watching then was not cheerful, and it was comforting to feel the weight of the big gun upon his knee. The last hum of voices had died away in camp, the fires burned low, and except for an occasional floundering beside the creek, the bush was strangely silent. The darkness was now intense. The wild animals would await moonrise to begin their hunting; what Dane expected would happen before then. He could not see Bad Dollar, who crouched somewhere near the entrance of the tent, though he heard his file grate softly upon a matchet, and could picture him running a black thumb along the keen-edged blade at every cessation.
Confused memories crowded upon Dane, with Maxwell stalking through them all. He saw him again, alert, indomitable, resourceful, quelling the mutinous, cheering the dejected, and tending the sick. He saw him gasping his life away in that very tent, with, regardless of his own agony, words which would brighten all his partner's future upon his lips; and again a gust of passion stirred the lonely man in every fiber. It passed, and—for Dane was not for the time being wholly sane—left behind it a coldly murderous resolution.
Suddenly there was a touch upon his leg. Without a sound Bad Dollar had wriggled toward him. Turning as silently as he could, Dane crawled to the entrance, where he crouched with his right heel beneath him, behind the drawn-back sheeting which hung slackly. It was so dark that he could scarcely distinguish the nearest cottonwood; but though his ears failed to localize any definite sound he became conscious of some danger approaching. Under different circumstances Dane would have felt distinctly uneasy, knowing, as he did, that the thick gloom sheltered those who sought his life. Then, however, he feared only that he had not accurately loaded the cartridge, or that the damp had spoiled the fulminating mixture inside its cap; and his fingers were woodenly steady as they tightened on the gun.
He felt with one hand for the socket of the signal light and found it, stretched out a foot and pressed it against Bad Dollar when he touched him again warningly; and then the vague sensation of impending danger grew into shape at a recognizable sound. Noiselessly almost, but not quite, somebody or something was crawling toward the tent.
Dane suspended his very respiration as he strained his eyes, and listened. He could see nothing, and his ears seemed filled with a dull throbbing, but in spite of this he could hear the faintest of rustlings on two sides of the tent at once, and knew that, because no white man could move in such a manner, his dusky enemies were coming. One seemed to be making for the end of the tent, where his bed was spread; the other was creeping toward the entrance to prevent the escape of the victim in case his comrade failed at the first attempt. It was done with so little noise that Dane found it hard to realize he had creatures of flesh and blood to deal with, and not the malevolent devils the bushmen believed in. Bad Dollar made no further movement, and Dane crouched woodenly still, only sliding his forefinger inside the guard of the trigger when at last a spray of leaves swished softly a few yards away.
Then he heard somebody breathing close beside him, and knew that sudden death stood hidden behind the slacker sheeting which began to roll back very slowly; and yet, while the throbbing in his ears grew louder, he remained impassive another few seconds. He had awaited that moment patiently; and he meant to strike decisively, for his dead comrade's sake. There was no light. The night was black and thick; but some sense beside that of the optic nerve made it evident that part of the moving sheeting was more rigid than the rest because it rested against human flesh. Knowing that at the next move the assassin would fall over him, Dane felt for that portion of the sheeting with the muzzle of the gun while his forefinger contracted on the trigger.
The barrel found something that yielded as he added the last ounce of pressure; there was a detonation; the white man fell backward with his eyes filled with smoke and two fingers gashed by the trigger guard; and something that struggled convulsively fell upon the canvas and bore it down.
The tent collapsed behind Dane as he slipped from under it; but knowing how the heavy B-shot would at that distance smash through bone and muscle, he paid no more attention to this assailant. First he snapped out the spent cartridge and crammed another home, then, striking a match, touched the signal light. It smoldered for a moment, then a column of blue fire swept aloft, and its radiance which beat athwart the towering trunks showed a striking spectacle.
Close behind the white man a shapeless heap of fur and black flesh lay quivering upon the over-turned tent. Half-seen for a second a dim figure, whose garments were not those of a native, vanished among the remoter trunks. Men with weapons came flitting out of the shadows which shrouded the camp; and about thirty yards away a monstrous object with the head of a beast and the legs of a man was slinking toward a creeper festoon. Dane flung the gun to his shoulder and fired as it ran, but the glare of the light beat transversely along the barrel, blinding him. Springing clear of the filmy smoke, he saw the second assailant was still running, and he sprang forward without waiting to reload. The light would last but a few more seconds. Still, the object moved at twice his speed, and might have escaped but that as he blundered on, choking in his haste, a diminutive figure ran forth to meet it, and the beast flung an upper limb aloft. Dane saw the spear which had been meant for his destruction draw back to stab; but the negro, Bad Dollar, sprang sideways, and his broad matchet, long filed to a razor-edge, flared under the last flicker of the light as he swung it round his head. Then there was sudden darkness, a thud and a crash.
Dane, guessing that Bad Dollar's matchet had bitten deep, and that his carrier comrades would see his victim did not escape, turned at top-most speed in the direction of the creek. Men came running behind him; but a heavier sound was audible through the patter of their feet, and he knew that one who was not barefooted fled for his life near ahead. He was running fast, but Dane, flinging the gun down, knew that he was gaining, and remembered that the man he sought would find his passage barred across the creek. So they ran, straining every sinew in a desperate race. Now and then one smashed through a thorn brake, or staggered, catching his foot in a creeper vine, but neither went down, and the gurgle of the creek grew nearer all the time. Dane raised his voice, and though his cry was barely articulate it proved sufficient, and as Amadu's hail came back in answer the footsteps before him grew slower, and a tongue of flame shot up.