@@@@@His hands were wavering, and he watched the
@@@@@His hands were wavering, and he watched the flat eyes of the snake with absorption"Don' miss," Wilson whispered
The sound of the shot bounded from wall to wall with the over-pouring clamor of an artillery pieceThe snake's head disappeared into a mash of pulp, and its body quivered frenetically for many secondsThe men watched intently, awe-struck, their ears deafened by the noise of Red's gun"Let's get out of here," Gallagher cried
They stumbled over one another in their sudden frenzy to get outAll of them had an acute panicWilson mopped his face and breathed deeply of the air outside the hole"Ah guess that's one box Ah'll never get," he said casuallyActually, he was feeling very tired, and his restlessness had spent itself temporarily"Ah guess we might as well get on back," he said
The men descended the ridge and struck out along the road leading back to the bivouac areaThey passed a gutted tank which lay moldering off the road, its treads broken and rusted, looking like the skeleton of a lizard"Goddam snake like that soon," Martinez saidHe was looking at a corpse which lay almost naked on its backIt was an eloquent corpse, for there were no wounds on its body, and its hands were clenching the earth as if to ask for a last time the always futile questionThe naked shoulders were hunched together in anguish, and he could easily conceive the expression of pain that should have been on the corpse's mouthBut the corpse lay there without a head, and Red ached dully as he realized the impossibility of ever seeing that man's faceThere was only a bloody fragment at the terminus of the neckThe body seemed to lie in a casing of silence
Abruptly Red realized he was sober and very wearyThe other men were already many yards ahead of him on the road, but he continued to look, drawn by some emotion he could not expressVery deep inside himself he was thinking that this was a man who had once wanted things, and the thought of his own death was always a little unbelievable to himThe man had had a childhood, a youth and a young manhood, and there had been dreams and memories