o! Wait!" The tone rang dismayed.

Trembling, blinded with heat and powder smoke, and heart sick, I paused,
to fumble and to reload the almost emptied cylinder.

"I can't reach him," said I. "He's too far in."

Her voice answered gently.

"No matter, dear. You're firing too hastily. Don't forget. Please rest a
minute, and drink. You can bathe your eyes. It's hard, shooting across the
hot sand. They'll bring others. We've no need to save water, you know."

"I know," I admitted.

We niggardly drank. I dabbled my burning eyes, cleared my sight. Of the
fellow in the rifle pit there was no living token. The Sioux had ceased
their gambols. They sat steadfast, again anticipative. A stillness,
menaceful and brooding, weighted the landscape.

She sighed.

"Well?"

The pregnant truce oppressed. What was hatching out, now? I cautiously
shifted posture, to stretch and scan; instinctively groped for the
canteen, to wet my lips again; a puff of smoke burst from the hollow, the
canteen clinked, flew from my hand and went clattering among the rocks.

"Oh!" she cried, aghast. "But you're not hurt?" Then--"I saw him. He'll
come up again, in a moment. Be ready."

The Sioux in the background were shrieking. They had accounted for our
mules; by chance shot they had nipped our water. Yet neither event
affected us as they seemed to think it should. Mules, water--these were
inconsequentials in the long-run that was due to be short, at most. We
husbanded other relief in our keeping.

Suddenly, as I craned, the fellow fired again; he was a good shot, had
discovered a niche in our rampart, for the ball fanned my cheek with the
wings of a vicious wasp. On the instant I replied, snapping quick answer.

"I don't think you hit him," she said. "Let me try. It may change the
luck. You're tired. I'll hold on the spot--he'll come up in the same
place, head and shoulders. You'll have to tempt him. Are you afraid, sir?"
She smiled upon me as she took the revolver.

"But if he kills me----?" I faltered.

"What of that?"

"You."

"I?" Her face filled. "I should not be long."

She adjusted the revolver to a crevice a little removed from me--"They
will be hunting you, not me," she said--and crouched behind it, peering
earnestly out, intent upon the hollow. And I edged farther, and farther,
as if seeking for a mark, but with all my flesh a-prickle and my breath
fast, like any man, I assert, who forces himself to invite the striking
capabi