Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/156

 Kebr, lay the dry river bed called the Wadi Saglat; this O'Rourke had forgotten completely; the rolling face of the desert had deceived him, leading him to the very brink of the gully before he saw it. He stumbled, slipped and rolled to the bottom—some twenty feet—in a smother of sand and pebbles.

He got up, shook himself, and set his jaw with commingled determination and despair. Here it was absolutely an impossibility to trace footprints.

He turned half-heartedly to the east, towards the interior, and passed along the bed of the gully for a matter of about twenty feet. And then he stopped suddenly—brought to a halt by a shot.

A puff of gas ascended above a rock a little ways ahead, and he saw the helmet of one of his own troopers dodge down behind it. Instantaneously a bullet shaved his cheek closely, and buried itself deep in the wall of the gully. With a cry of relief, O'Rourke sprang forward, hope high in his heart. He swung around the corner of the rock and covered with the Mauser the figure of Soly—Soly recumbent upon one elbow, clutching his rifle with feeble fingers, lying in a welter of his own blood.

The man looked up sullenly, and growled faintly.

"Go on!" he said. "Shoot me; I haven't long to live, anyway, monsieur."

O'Rourke wrenched the Mauser from the man's grip and knelt beside him; the rest of the searching party came up and stood about, wondering aloud.

"Ye are right!" exclaimed the Irishman, rising after a diagnosis of the fellow's wound. "Ye have about an hour to live. Ye have been bleeding for some time?"

"About two hours, monsieur." The man shuddered.