hed, gave him a heavy, bovine look of inquiry.

Quintana said softly: "Me, I have enough already of this damn woods.
Why shall we starve here when there lies our path?" He pointed north;
his arm remained outstretched for a while.

"Clinch, he is there," growled Picquet.

"Also our path, l'ami Henri. ... And, behind us, they hunt us now with
_dogs._"

Picquet bared his big white teeth in fierce surprise. "Dogs?" he
repeated with a sort of snarl.

"That is how they now hunt us, my frien' -- like they hunt the hare in
the Cote d'Or. ... Me, I shall now reconnoitre -- _that_ way!" And he
looked where he was pointing, into the north -- with smouldering eyes.
Then he turned calmly to Picquet: "An' you, l'ami?"

"At orders, mon capitaine."

"C'est bien. Venez."

They walked leisurely forward with rifles shouldered, following the hard
ridge out across a vast and flooded land where the bark of trees
glimmered with wet mosses.

After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one
hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north.

About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left,
and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods
beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the
woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and
nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and
shoulder.

He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled
broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor.

For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he
began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came
streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His scream
ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and
started running toward the shooting.

As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings
stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close
quarters.

Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy
stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees
again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time,
deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb
and body and head.

Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from
behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's