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.
Watching intently he caught a glimpse of a gray cap showing above the rock across the valley, and, raising his light rifle, he fired, quick as a flash.