Still he squatted on his heels, rubbing dirt from gold and debating in just what manner he should rise up.  He might rise up with a rush and claw his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened on the even footing above ground.  Or he might rise up slowly and carelessly, and feign casually to discover the thing that breathed at his back.  His instinct and every fighting fibre of his body favored the mad, clawing rush to the surface.  His intellect, and the craft thereof, favored the slow and cautious meeting with the thing that menaced and which he could not see.  And while he debated, a loud, crashing noise burst on his ear.  At the same instant he received a stunning blow on the left side of the back, and from the point of impact felt a rush of flame through his flesh.  He sprang up in the air, but halfway to his feet collapsed.  His body crumpled in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, and he came down, his chest across his pan of gold, his face in the dirt and rock, his legs tangled and twisted because of the restricted space at the bottom of the hole.  His legs twitched convulsively several times.  His body was shaken as with a mighty ague.  There was a slow expansion of the lungs, accompanied by a deep sigh.  Then the air was slowly, very slowly, exhaled, and his body as slowly flattened itself down into inertness.

Above, revolver in hand, a man was peering down over the edge of the hole.  He peered for a long time at the prone and motionless body beneath him.  After a while the stranger sat down on the edge of the hole so that he could see into it, and rested the revolver on his knee.  Reaching his hand into a pocket, he drew out a wisp of brown paper.  Into this he dropped a few crumbs of tobacco.  The combination became a cigarette, brown and squat, with the ends turned in.  Not once did he take his eyes from the body at the bottom of the hole.  He lighted the cigarette and drew its smoke into his lungs with a caressing intake of the breath.  He smoked slowly.  Once the cigarette went out and he relighted it.  And all the while he studied the body beneath him.

In the end he tossed the cigarette stub away and rose to his feet.  He moved to the edge of the hole.  Spanning it, a hand resting on each edge, and with the revolver still in the right hand, he muscled his body down into the hole.  While his feet were yet a yard from the bottom he released his hands and dropped down.

At the instant his feet struck bottom he saw the pocket-miner’s arm leap out, and his own legs knew a swift, jerking grip that overthrew him.  In the nature of the jump his revolver-hand was above his head.  Swiftly as the grip had flashed about his legs, just as swiftly he brought the revolver down.  He was still in the air, his fall in process of completion, when he pulled the trigger.  The explosion was deafening in the confined space.  The smoke filled the hole so that he could see nothing.  He struck the bottom on his back, and like a cat’s the pocket-miner’s body was on top of him.  Even as the miner’s body passed on top, the stranger crooked in his right arm to fire; and even in that instant the miner, with a quick thrust of elbow, struck his wrist.  The muzzle was thrown up and the bullet thudded into the dirt of the side of the hole.