“Shootin’ me up,” breathed the driver as he reloaded. “I’ll teach him.”
“You won’t that way,” said Clement. “Not without damage to yourself. That must be the half-breed Siwash planted there to hold us away from Cobalt as long as possible. He’s up to all the tricks. We won’t be able to rush him, we’ve got to get him by guile.”
“I don’t care about guile as long as I can shoot him up.”
Clement who, in the broadening pallor of light, had been studying the ground, said crisply, “You shall. Stick your revolver round the farther end of your rock ... no more than your gun, if you value your arm, and when you’ve fired, whip it in sharp. No, don’t trouble to aim at anything. Ready. Now fire.”
The driver’s revolver spoke. Almost at once there was an answering sparkle from the rock-cliff, and the rock against which the revolver rested chipped into flecks of flying particles.
“Close up,” said the driver. “He’s getting his range pretty.”
“He is,” said Clement, who had asked the driver to fire so that he might study their opponent’s position. “Lucky for us his first shots were mere sighters. But now he’ll get anything of us that shows. Also he moves after every shot. We won’t get him by pot shooting. We’ve got to tackle this fellow with some of his own cunning. And we’ve got to do it quickly before the light gets too good?”
His mind, accustomed in the old days to trench warfare, sized up the situation quickly and accurately.
“Will you two crawl over to the left there? And, don’t forget, cover is life. I want you to get behind those rocks. When I give you the word, I want one of you to blaze at him and draw his fire. When he fires back, I want you both to loose off.... Can you fire with the left hand, Gatineau? Well, do, alternating your shots. I want that lad to be convinced that he has three men pinned here.”
“And you’re going to flank him?” said Gatineau.