His muscles were growing cramped. He could
not forever double himself up like a four-bladed jackknife behind
the altogether inefficient shelter of the rock.
His executioner was hidden in the edge of the timber, not directly
opposite him, but nearly a hundred yards down stream. Twenty times
he had wondered why the fiend with the rifle did not creep up
through that timber and take a good, open pot-shot at him from the
vantage point which lay at the end of a straight line between his
rock and the nearest spruce and balsam. From that angle he could
not completely shelter himself. But the man a hundred yards below
had not moved a foot from his ambush since he had fired his first
shot. That had come when Carrigan was crossing the open space of
soft, white sand. It had left a burning sensation at his temple--
half an inch to the right and it would have killed him. Swift as
the shot itself, he dropped behind the one protection at hand, the
up-jutting shoulder of shale.
For a quarter of an hour he had been making efforts to wriggle
himself free from his bulky shoulder-pack without exposing himself
to a coup-de-grace. At last he had the thing off.
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