After a quarter of a mile the ridge broadened and split into two, one hog-back branching northeast! They, however, continued north. About twenty minutes later Picquet, creeping along on Quintana's left, and some sixty yards distant, discovered something moving in the woods beyond, and fired at it. Instantly two unseen rifles spoke from the woods ahead. Picquet was jerked clear around, lost his balance and nearly fell. Blood was spurting from his right arm, between elbow and shoulder. He tried to lift and level his rifle; his arm collapsed and dangled broken and powerless; his rifle clattered to the forest floor. For a moment he stood there in plain view, dumb, deathly white; then he began screaming with fury while the big, soft-nosed bullets came streaming in all around him. His broken arm was hit again. His screaming ceased; he dragged out his big clasp-knife with his left hand and started running toward the shooting. As he ran, his mangled arm flopping like a broken wing, Byron Hastings stepped out from behind a tree and coolly shot him down at close quarters. Then Quintana's rifle exploded twice very quickly, and the Hastings boy stumbled sideways and fell sprawling. He managed to rise to his knees again; he even was trying to stand up when Quintana, taking his time, deliberately began to empty his magazine into the boy, riddling him limb and body and head. Down once more, he still moved his arms. Sid Hone reached out from behind a fallen log to grasp the dying lad's ankle and draw him into shelter, but Quintana reloaded swiftly and smashed Hone's left hand with the first shot. Then Jim Hastings, kneeling behind a bunch of juniper, fired a high-velocity bullet into the tree behind which Quintana stood; but before he could fire again Quintana's shot in reply came ripping through the juniper and tore a ghastly hole in the calf of his left leg, striking a blow that knocked young Hastings flat and paralysed as a dead flounder. A mile to the north, blocking the other exit from Drowned Valley, Mike Clinch, Harvey Chase, Cornelius Blommers, and Dick Berry stood listening to the shooting. "B'gosh," blurted out Chase, "it sounds like they was goin' through, Mike. B'gosh, it does!" Clinch's little pale eyes blazed, but he said in his soft, agreeable voice: "Stay right here, boys. Like as not some of 'em will come this way." The shooting below ceased. Clinch's nostrils expanded and flattened with every breath, as he stood glaring into the woods. "Harve," he said presently, "you an' Corny go down there an' kinda look around. And you signal if I'm wanted. G'wan, both o' you. Git!" They started, running heavily, but their feet made little noise on the moss. Berry came over and stood near Clinch. For ten minutes neither man moved. Clinch stared at the woods in front of him. The younger man's nervous glance flickered like a snake's tongue in every direction, and he kept moistening his lips with his tongue.