Nothing was to be gained
by this long range cannon fire. They must charge home with the bayonet.
He raised himself a little in order that he might peep over the stone and
see if the charge were coming, and then with a little cry he dropped back,
a fine gray powder stinging his face. A rifle had been fired across the
valley and a bullet chipping the top of the rock sheltering Dick warned
him that he was not the only sharpshooter who lay in an ambush.
Peeping again from the side of the rock, he saw curls of blue smoke
rising from a point behind a stone just like his own on the other side of
the valley. It was enough to tell him that a Southern sharpshooter lay
there and had marked him for prey.
Dick's anger rose. Why should anyone seek his life, trying to pick him
off as if he were a beast of prey? He had been keeping quiet, disturbing
nobody, merely seeking a chance to escape, when this ruthless rebel had
seen him. He became in his turn hot and fiercely ready to give bullet
for bullet. Smoke floating through the pass and the flash of the cannon,
made him more eager to hit the sharpshooter who was seeking so hard to
hit him.
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