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 instantly, to see that the man was lying doubled across the fallen tree trunk, his rifle having dropped, muzzle down, in some bushes below him. Sanderson heard Williams' voice, raised in savage exultation: "Nip my ear, will you--yon measly son-of-a-gun! I'll show you! "Got him with my pistol!" he yelled to one of the Double A men near him. "Come on out and fight like men, you miserable whelps!" The young engineer's fighting blood was up--that was plain to Sanderson. Sanderson grinned, yielded to a solemn hope that Williams would not get reckless and expose himself needlessly, and began to examine the walls of the fissure to determine on a new offensive movement. He was interrupted, though, by another shout from Williams. "Got him!" yelled the engineer; "plumb in the beezer!" Sanderson peered out, to see the body of a man come tumbling down the opposite wall of the defile. "That's all on this side!" Williams informed the others, shouting. "Now let's get at the guys on the other side and salivate them!" Again Sanderson grinned at the engineer's enthusiasm. That enthusiasm was infectious, for Sanderson heard some of the other men laughing. The laughing indicated that they now entertained a hope of ultimate victory--a hope which they could not have had before Williams and Sanderson had disposed of the enemies at their rear. Sanderson, too, was imbued with a spirit of enthusiasm. He began to climb the walls of the crevice, finding the ragged rock projections admirably convenient for footing.