"In Heaven's name, how did you come here?"
"Lay down, I tell ye!" he replied, throwing himself flat on his face as he spoke.
We were too late. They had fired on us from the cedars, and a bullet struck poor Van Antwerp down at my feet.
"Now for it, before they can load," cried Enoch, darting past me and leading a way on the open border of the swale, with long, unerring leaps from one raised point to another. The Indians raced beside him, crouching almost to a level with the reeds, and I followed.
A single shot came from the thicket as we reached it, and I felt a momentary twinge of pain in my arm.
"Damnation! I've missed him! Run for your lives!" I heard shouted excitedly from the bush.
There came a crack, crack, of two guns. One of my Indians rolled headlong upon the ground; the others darted forward in pursuit of some flitting forms dimly to be seen in the undergrowth beyond.
"Come here!" called Enoch to me. He was standing among the low cedars, resting his chin on his hands, spread palm down over the muzzle of his gun, and looking calmly upon something on the ground before him.
I hurried to his side. There, half-stretched on the wet, blood-stained grass, panting with the exertion of raising himself on his elbow, and looking me square in the face with distended eyes, lay Philip Cross.