words.

And now, thinking of that parting injunction, Carrigan grinned,
even as the sweat of death dampened his face in the heat of the
afternoon sun. For at the end of those sixty minutes that had
passed since his midday pot of tea, the grimly, atrociously
unexpected had happened, like a thunderbolt out of the azure of
the sky.





II


Huddled behind a rock which was scarcely larger than his body,
groveling in the white, soft sand like a turtle making a nest for
its eggs, Carrigan told himself this without any reservation. He
was, as he kept repeating to himself for the comfort of his soul,
in a deuce of a fix. His head was bare--simply because a bullet
had taken his hat away. His blond hair was filled with sand. His
face was sweating. But his blue eyes were alight with a grim sort
of humor, though he knew that unless the other fellow's ammunition
ran out he was going to die.

For the twentieth time in as many minutes he looked about him. He
was in the center of a flat area of sand. Fifty feet from him the
river murmured gently over yellow bars and a carpet of pebbles.
Fifty feet on the opposite side of him was the cool, green wall of