Crack! crack! crack!
Not fifty yards ahead from behind a dozen boulders leap out as many jets of fire, while the snowy white puffs of smoke float up a few feet and disappear in the quivering air.
One of the men stops for an almost imperceptible instant, as if to brace himself. His hands rise to the level of his chest as if to bring his rifle to his shoulder and then—down he falls headlong to the ground in a limp mass. Dead! Shot through the head. Not a quiver; not a motion; without a sound, were it not for that made by his falling rifle.
As he falls his companion staggers back a pace or two, catches himself, and then, half crouching, half falling, drops behind one of the many boulders. “Hit!” he thinks to himself, “but, thank God! not fatally; only a scratch.” Life seems a new thing; to live, a new joy.
Only a scratch. “Where?” He hardly has time to think as he places his gun across the boulder and fires at a figure, naked, dark, clothed only in a breech clout and with a red scarf wound around the head. He notes almost unconsciously how pronounced its color is against the dark face and darker hair of its wearer. “A miss!” he mentally remarks, as the figure disappears. “But better luck next time,” he thinks, as he pushes down the lever of his gun and throws out the empty shell, replacing it with a cartridge. “Short range;” he should have hit. It can’t be that he was losing his old cunning; that his aim was bad. “No;” he fired in haste and was “rattled.” “Another shot and he will show them” are the thoughts that flash through his mind as he peers cautiously ahead to discover his enemies.
None in sight.
For the first time he feels pain. Half numbness, half fire; how it tears as he raises his shirt and looks at a little blue hole hardly larger than a pea near the right side in the short ribs. “Only a scratch or it would bleed worse. Did it go through?” he asks himself, as he passes his hand up his back to find if there be an orifice of exit. “No.” “That is bad, for there is no surgeon to be had to cut the missile out. Pshaw, what matters it? Other men have lived with bullets in them—why could not he? Night would soon come and then with darkness he would go. He was not losing blood sufficient to weaken him much, and by morning he would be far away. After all, it would only be a close call, something to tell about. But poor Tom! he was gone,” and as he looked at the lifeless form of his partner he could hardly keep back the tears.
Crack! crack! go a couple of shots off to his left, and he sees the dust flying up from near his feet. He tries to draw his limbs up to get them in a safer position. Tries again, and the cold sweat breaks from him. He cannot move them!
They are dead—paralyzed!
Something like a sob breaks from him. It is all over. In the first flush of possible escape he had not thought of the spine being injured. He knew it now. The game was played. A few hours longer at the best. To-morrow and the next day, and the days and the years to come would find him there. The end was only a question of a short time. Yet he had only thought it a scratch.