There might have been a second of mutual staring. Then each rifle in
each group was at the shoulder. As Dan's glance flashed along the barrel
of his weapon, the figure of a man suddenly loomed as if the musket had
been a telescope. The short black beard, the slouch hat, the pose of the
man as he sighted to shoot, made a quick picture in Dan's mind. The same
moment, it would seem, he pulled his own trigger, and the man, smitten,
lurched forward, while his exploding rifle made a slanting crimson
streak in the air, and the slouch hat fell before the body. The billows
of the fog, governed by singular impulses, rolled between.

"You got that feller sure enough," said a comrade to Dan. Dan looked at
him absent-mindedly.




V


When the next morning calmly displayed another fog, the men of the
regiment exchanged eloquent comments; but they did not abuse it at
length, because the streets of the town now contained enough galloping
aides to make three troops of cavalry, and they knew that they had come
to the verge of the great fight.

Dan conversed with the man who had once possessed a horse-hair trunk;
but they did not mention the line of hills which had furnished them in
more careless moments with an agreeable topic. They avoided it now as
condemned men do the subject of death, and yet the thought of it stayed
in their eyes as they looked at each other and talked gravely of other