“Yes, sir. I got it.”
“Well, lay a machine gun to cover the ground about five yards to the right of that. Call the range three-fifty. I guess he is somewhere around there. I can’t see any loophole or anything, but maybe he is lying right out in the open, covered in grass, or—”
Crack! The conscientious artist over the way was growing restive at his own want of success. This time he chipped the top of the steel helmet.
“That will do,” said Boone. “Lower away that turnip, Gillette, and we’ll take a second bearing farther along.”
Mr. Gillette collected his paraphernalia with the solemn dignity of an acolyte taking part in a mystery. But he unbent to human level for a moment.
“You see,” he observed caustically, “we don’t require no poor fish here, Joe McCarthy!”
In due course a second turnip was hoisted and perforated, a second bearing taken, and another machine gun laid. The machine-gun teams took station; the first cartridges were fed into the chambers.
“Let ’em go the moment he snipes again,” was Boone’s order.
A third spot was selected, and a third turnip exposed. This time it wagged itself provokingly, and the sniper responded at once. It was a beautiful shot, but it was his last. Next moment two converging streams of machine-gun bullets were spattering his lair. What happened we shall never know, but we were never again troubled from that particular locality.
“We certainly got to hand it to you, Ed,” announced Joe McCarthy, in an unusual fit of self-abasement.