The first speaker stared at him, but the other one said impatiently, "Finish him off, Alick, and let's get it over."
The man called Alick answered in a subdued voice. Bryce did not catch what he said, but supposed it to be a counsel of caution. His smile grew in intensity, so much so that Alick snapped at him. "What the deuce are you grinning at, you fat fool?" he demanded.
"You'll know soon enough," Bryce said with a chuckle. He looked right past them into the shadows of the trees, on his face the joyful expression of a man who sees the long-locked gates of his prison swing open before him. Both men whirled round with a chorus of oaths. They were quite positive that Bryce's mate had stolen a march on them and crept up behind their backs. They had their heads turned away but for the fraction of a second, but the time, short though it was, was plenty long enough for Mr. Bryce. With an agility, remarkable in a man of his weight and state of health, he faded into the landscape like some fat fairy.
"Fooled!" said Alick's companion, and he whipped round to face his prisoner, only to find that the keen-brained Mr. Bryce had vanished as completely as if he had been blown off the face of the earth.
"Nice pair of goats we are," remarked Alick disgustedly.
The other said nothing, but stood for a moment in a state of indecision. At that precise instant a pencil of flame shot out from one of the trees immediately in front of them, and Alick dropped his revolver with a howl of pain.
"He's winged me," he said, and applied to Mr. Bryce an epithet not usually heard in polite society.
His mate fired at the tree from which the shot had evidently come, but the bullet did nothing more than flatten itself against the trunk in a shower of dust and dry bark. Mr. Bryce's revolver spoke once again. This time he failed to register.
"The sooner we get out of this the better," said Alick, with one hand clasped to his injured shoulder. "The beggar'll riddle us both if we stop here."
The other man grunted his approval of the suggestion and proceeded to carry it into effect at once.