Then as in a flash, the
ancestor in him reappeared and in his features was written that very
process of fate which Dr. Bennington had said was in him. Again his hand
was firm on the barrel and his eye riveted on the sight, as he drew
himself up until he lay even with the bank of the _arroyo_.

The volley from the cotton-woods had swept over Prather's head at the
instant that he had taken hold of his rifle. It dropped from his grasp.
He burrowed in the sand under the pressure of that near and sinister rush
of singing breaths.

"I can't! I can't!" he said helplessly.

He was leaden flesh, without the power to move. At his words Jack glanced
back to see a dropped jaw and glassy, staring eyes.

"You are suffering!" exclaimed Jack. "Are you hit?"

"No!" Prather managed to say, and reached out for his rifle in clumsy
desperation, as if he were feeling for it in the dark.

"Take your time!" said Jack encouragingly, as one would to a victim of
stage fright. "There isn't any danger for the moment, while advantage of
position is with us--the sun over our shoulders and in their faces."

The lumps around the water-hole grew smaller. Evidently, as a result of
the lesson, they were creeping backward on their stomachs to a less
exposed position. Two had quite disappeared, or else the brilliant play
of light had melted them into the golden carpet of reflected sunshine on
which they rested. Directly, Jack saw two figures creeping over the rim
of the pasturage basin.

"So, that's it!" he said to Firio.

Firio nodded his understanding of Leddy's plan to take them in flank
under cover of the _arroyo_.

"We shall have to respond in kind!" said Jack.

He left his hat where his head had been and began crawling along the side
of the _arroyo_, but paused to call to Prather, who, now that no bullets
were flying, was trying the mechanism of his rifle with a somewhat
steadier hand:

"Prather, if you could manage to get up there beside Firio and join him
in pouring out a magazine full at the right moment, it would help! If
not, put your hat up there beside mine. You can do that without exposing
yourself."

Jack's tone was that of one who urges a tired man to take a few more
steps, or an invalid without any appetite to try another sup of broth. It
had no hint of irony.

"No matter," said Firio. "Leddy know he can't fight. Leddy know there is
only two of us!" His tone was without satire, but its sting was sharper
than satire; that