Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/191

 leading party slinking over the top of a sandhill, his rifle at trail. It was Mahmud, who turned, waved a hand and waited.

A short, quick dash under the broiling sun brought O'Rourke to his side.

"Here there were only six or eight, master," reported Mahmud. "We put to flight such as we did not slay."

"Good," breathed O'Rourke. "And now for it!" He tightened his belt and gave the command for the double-quick; the forward party heard and mended their pace. In the rear the Tawareks were just bursting through the oasis, howling.

Despite the fact that the foreigners had the start, the Tawareks gained. Halfway to the sea O'Rourke was forced to pause and deploy his men to the right and left, to check the advance; it succeeded momentarily, but as he stood upon a dune top and surveyed the thin fringe of prone figures that were firing, rising, retreating swiftly, and dropping to fire again, his heart sank within him; not twenty men remained of them all.

And fully two miles were yet to be put behind them ere they gained the sea.

Very soberly they fought the distance out, selling each yard dearly, getting their pound of Tawarek flesh for each foot of the ground they yielded; but it was the fighting of men fore-damned, viciously determined to sell their lives to the highest bidder only.

They got their price—but also they paid it. While still a mile from the shore, but ten men remained to O'Rourke; and as he counted them two dropped out—one slain outright with a bullet through his head, another, knowing himself mortally wounded, slipping a shoe from one foot, and