Page:Arthur Stringer - Gun Runner.djvu/364

 edge of De Brigard's camp to the higher stretch of the creek-back. He saw the horseman stop, gesticulate, and apparently give orders. Then he swung about again, and circled out of sight. But five minutes after he had done so a second line of infantry detoured from the coppice-screened fringes of the camp and crept in towards the men who had earlier in the day taken their position along the creek-bed. Each man, McKinnon saw, carried a rifle. And again he wondered if the Princeton had reached Puerto Locombia, and again he secretly and desperately prayed that help would still come to them. Then he called to the girl at his side.

"They're going to try to rush us!" he explained to her, very quietly. But he found it hard to say to her just what he wanted to say.

"Can they?" she asked; her faith in him, now, was blind and unreasoning.

"Well, they'll pay for it!" was all he had the heart to say, as he swung his reloaded rifle up to the dusty wall-top.

He did not speak again, for there was no time for it. He was firing now, quickly and yet dispassionately. He caught up one gun after the other and poured his fire into the shifting and advancing shadows cut out with cameo-like clearness in the full afternoon sunlight. He kept firing, feverishly, and yet almost