A movement ten yards to the left of it challenged his attention. A second dark blot showed in the brown of the grass. It moved upward a fraction, the top of a head. Carver noted the slight sidewise motion as the man shifted for a better view. His gun hand contracted as he lined down the barrel but he loosened his fingers again. It would not do to shoot until he was sure, leaving him in the same state of uncertainty which now handicapped Noll. The sun was swinging low in the west. Another two hours and it would be too dark to see. If Noll could hold out until then he could make a clean get-away. If Carver gave a sign too soon Noll would know that his shot of two hours past had failed to locate its mark and he would stay under cover till nightfall and then make a run for it. It was the uncertainty that was breaking him down. Noll couldn’t go against another two hours of that sort of thing, Carver told himself. He repeated this assurance a score of times after the head disappeared. Two hours of uncertainty for Lassiter--two hours of craving for just one cigarette for himself--which would win out? He composed himself for another long wait. Then Noll’s head and shoulders appeared as he rose to his knees, only to be as quickly withdrawn from view as he dropped once more on his face. His voice rose from the opposite depression, hoarse and unsteady as he reviled Carver, hoping to taunt him into some answer,--the first sound of a voice in nearly three hours. There came a crashing report from the dip and Carver’s horse went down in a heap, shot through the shoulders. The animal screamed once as it struggled on the ground. A spurt of blue smoke revealed the rifleman’s position but Carver knew that he was well below the danger line. The horse ceased struggling. A bubbling rattle announced the death of his favorite mount. The voice of the man who had fired the wanton shot rose with the sound. “How do you like the sound of that?” he demanded. “That’s what will happen to you between now and dark.” He leaped to his feet and stood facing Carver, then dropped back out of sight. “He’s going to pieces,” Carver told himself. “He’ll make a break now most any time.” The exertion and relief from inaction apparently had lessened the strain under which Noll had been laboring and he made no other move for many long weary minutes. Then, without warning, he was up and running toward Carver’s position, his rifle half raised before him. He was within forty yards; thirty. Then Carver lifted his forearm and fired. Lassiter tottered drunkenly and shot into the haze of smoke that floated before Carver’s gun. The ball plowed a furrow three inches from Carver’s ear and spattered fresh earth in his face. Carver shot twice again. For a space of twenty seconds he held his place in the grass, then sat up on his heels and twisted a cigarette. XII