small farmhouse. There were no signs of life. No smoke curled from the
chimney, not a barnyard fowl clucked and strutted. The kitchen door
stood open, and he gazed so long and hard into the black aperture that
it seemed almost that a farmer's wife must emerge at any moment.

He licked the pollen and dust from his dry lips, stiffened himself, mind
and body, and rode out into the blazing sunshine. Nothing stirred. He
went on past the house, and approached the wall of trees and bushes by
the river's bank. One thought persisted maddeningly. It was of the crash
into his body of a high-velocity bullet. It made him feel very fragile
and defenseless, and he crouched lower in the saddle.

Tethering his horse in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred
yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was,
without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very thirsty.
But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed on the screen
on the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he sat down, his
carbine resting on his knees. The minutes passed, and slowly his
tenseness relaxed. At last he decided there was no danger; but just as
he prepared to part the bushes and bend down to the water, a movement
among the opposite bushes caught his eye.

It might be a bird. But he waited. Again there was an agitation of the
bushes, and then, so suddenly that it almost startled a cry from him,
the bushes parted and a face peered out. It was a face covered with
several weeks' growth of ginger-colored beard. The eyes were blue and
wide apart, with laughter-wrinkles in the comers that showed despite the
tired and anxious expression of the whole face.

All this he could see with microscopic clearness, for the distance was
no more than twenty feet. And all this he saw in such brief time, that
he saw it as he lifted his carbine to his shoulder. He glanced along the
sights, and knew that he was gazing upon a man who was as good as dead.
It was impossible to miss at such point blank range.

But he did not shoot. Slowly he lowered the carbine and watched. A
hand, clutching a water-bottle, became visible and the ginger beard bent
downward to fill the bottle. He could hear the gurgle of the water. Then
arm and bottle and ginger beard disappeared behind the closing bushes.
A long time he waited, when, with thirst unslaked, he crept back to his
horse, rode slowly across the sun-washed clearing, and passed into the
shel