The elemental brutal
instinct of the hunter had kindled at the flash in that Westerner's eye.
It would be a hunt worth while--the game was human.
For five minutes they crept through the bushes hiding from tree to tree
in the open spaces. They searched the tops in vain, when suddenly a
piece of white oak bark fluttered down from the sky and struck the
ground at their feet.
The Westerner smiled at John and stood motionless:
"Well, I'm damned!"
They waited breathlessly, afraid to look up into the boughs of the
towering oak beneath which they were standing.
"Don't move now!" the man from the West cried, "and I'll pot him."
Slowly he stepped backward, softly, noiselessly, his eye fixed in the
treetop, his gun raised and finger on the trigger.
He stopped, aimed, and fired.
John looked up and saw the grey figure fall back from the tree trunk and
plunge downward, bounding from limb to limb and striking the ground
within ten feet of where he stood with heavy thud. The blood was gushing
in red streams from his nose and mouth.
They turned and hurried back to their lines--another fierce attack was
being made on those guns. The men in grey charged and drove them a
hundred feet before they rallied and pushed them back with frightful
loss on both sides.
John's Captain fell, dangerously wounded, and lay fifty feet beyond
their battle line.
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