The Texan started. "I reckon she was, kid. What of it?"
"You have a lock of her hair. I saw you pick it from the net. The net'll go out soon, like the grating did. Then there won't be anything to keep the snakes and beetles off of us. She'll sit up there and watch us die, and laugh.
"But I won't die, I tell you! I won't!"
He shuddered in Breska's hands, and began to laugh. The laugh rose to a thin, high scream like the wailing of a panther. Breska hit him accurately on the point of the jaw.
"Cafard," he grunted, as some of the men came running. "He'll come round all right."
He dragged Kuna to the dormitory, and came back doubled up with coughing from the exertion. Tex saw the pain in his dark face.
"Say," he murmured, "you'd better ask for leave when the relief gets here."
"If it gets here," gasped the Martian. "That attack at Fort Nelson was just a feint to draw off our reinforcements."
Tex nodded. "Even if the varmints broke through there, they'd be stopped by French River and the broken hills beyond it."
A map of Fort Washington's position formed itself in his mind; the stone blockhouse commanding a narrow tongue of land between strips of impassable swamp, barring the way into the valley. The valley led back into the uplands, splitting so that one arm ran parallel to the swamps for many miles.