den in the edge of the timber, not directly
opposite him, but nearly a hundred yards down stream. Twenty times he
had wondered why the fiend with the rifle did not creep up through that
timber and take a good, open pot-shot at him from the vantage point
which lay at the end of a straight line between his rock and the
nearest spruce and balsam. From that angle he could not completely
shelter himself. But the man a hundred yards below had not moved a foot
from his ambush since he had fired his first shot. That had come when
Carrigan was crossing the open space of soft, white sand. It had left a
burning sensation at his temple--half an inch to the right and it would
have killed him. Swift as the shot itself, he dropped behind the one
protection at hand, the up-jutting shoulder of shale.

For a quarter of an hour he had been making efforts to wriggle himself
free from his bulky shoulder-pack without exposing himself to a
coup-de-grace. At last he had the thing off. It was a tremendous relief
when he thrust it out beside the rock, almost doubling the size of his
shelter. Instantly there came the crash of a bullet in it, and then
another. He heard the rattle of pans, and wondered if his skillet would
be any good after today.

For the first time he could wipe the sweat from his face and stretch
himself. And also he could think. Carrigan possessed an unalterable
faith in the infallibility of the mind. "You can do anything with the
mind," was his code. "It is better than a good gun."

Now that he was physically more at ease, he began reassembling his
scattered mental faculties. Who was this stranger who was pot-shotting
at him with such deadly animosity from the ambush below? Who--

Another crash of lead in tinware and steel put an unpleasant emphasis
to the question. It was so close to his head that it made him wince,
and now--with a wide area within reach about him--he began scraping up
the sand for an added protection. There came a long silence after that
third clatter of distress from his cooking utensils. To David Carrigan,
even in his hour of deadly peril, there was something about it that for
an instant brought back the glow of humor in his eyes. It was hot,
swelteringly hot, in that packet of sand with the unclouded sun almost
straight overhead. He could have tossed a pebble to where a bright-eyed
sandpiper was cocking itself backward and forward, its jerky movements
accompanied by friendly little tittering noises. Ev