and boulders on the opposite
side of the defile. He had paid no attention to Williams' "Good work,
Sanderson!" except to grin and assure himself that Williams hadn't
"lost his nerve."

Presently at an angle that ran obliquely upward from a flat, projecting
ledge, behind which another Double A man lay, partly concealed,
Sanderson detected movement.

It was only a hat that he saw this time, and a glint of sunlight on the
barrel of a rifle. But he saw that the rifle, after moving, became
quite motionless, and he suspected that it was about to be used.

Again the cheek snuggled the stock of his rifle.

"This is goin' to be some shot--if I make it!" he told himself just
before he fired. "There ain't nothin' to shoot at but one of his ears,
looks like."

But at the report of the rifle, the weapon that had been so rigid and
motionless slipped from behind the rock and clattered downward. It
caught halfway between the rock and the bottom of the defile. There
came no sound from behind the rook, and no movement.

"Got him!" yelled Williams. "Go to it! There's only two more on this
side, that I can see. They're trying mighty hard to perforate me--I'm
losing weight dodging around here trying to keep them from drawing a
bead on me. If I had a rifle----"

Williams' voice broke off with the crash of a rifle behind him, though
a little to one side. Talking to Sanderson, and trying to see him,
Williams had stuck his head out a little too far. The bullet from the
rifle of the watching enemy clipped off a small piece of the engineer's
ear.

Williams' voice rose in impotent rage, filling the defile with profane
echoes. Sanderson did not hear Williams. He had chanced to be looking
toward the spot from whence the smoke spurt came.

A fallen tree, its top branches hanging down the wall of the defile,
provided concealment from which the enemy had sent his shot at
Williams. Sanderson snapped a shot at the point where he had seen the
smoke streak, and heard a cry of rage.

A man, his face distorted with pain, stood up behind the fallen tree
trunk, the upper part of his body in plain view.

His rage had made him reckless, and he had stood erect the better to
aim his rifle at the fissure in which Sanderson was concealed. He
fired--and missed, for Sanderson had ducked at the movement. Sanderson
heard the bullet strike the rock wall above his head, and go
ricochetting into the cleft behind him.

He peered out again in