Saint Goes West by Leslie Charteris

to look for trouble, but he was not made out of ice cream and bubble gum. He was making good progress against no resistance when the crash of a shot rattled down the canyon over the chattering of the water and brought him to his feet as if he had actually felt the bullet.
    6
    HE RAN up the side of the brook, fighting his way through clawing scrub and stumbling over boulders and loose gravel. Beyond the bend, the stream rose in a long twisting stairway of shallow cataracts posted with the same shapely palms that grew throughout its length. A couple of steps further up he found Freddie.
    Freddie was not dead. He was standing up. He stood and looked at the Saint in a rather foolish way, with his mouth open.
    “Come on,” said the Saint encouragingly. “Give.”
    Freddie pointed stupidly to the rock behind him. There was a bright silver scar on it where a bullet had scraped off a layer of lead on the rough surface before it riccocheted off into nowhere.
    “It only just missed me,” Freddie said.
    “Where were you standing?”
    “Just here.”
    Simon looked at the scar again. There was no way of reading from it the caliber or make of gun. The bullet itself might have come to rest anywhere within half a mile. He tried a rough sight from the mark on the rock, but within the most conservative limits it covered an area of at least two thousand square yards on the other slope of the canyon.
    The Saint’s spine tingled. It was a little like the helplessness of his trip around the house the night before-looking up at that raw muddle of shrubs and rocks, knowing that a dozen sharpshooters could lie hidden there, with no risk of being discovered before they had fired the one shot that might be all that was necessary …
    “Maybe we should go home, Freddie,” he said. “Now wait.” Freddie was going to be obstinate and valiant after he had found company. “If there’s someone up there-“
    “He could drop you before we were six steps closer to him,” said the Saint tersely. “You hired me as a bodyguard, not a pallbearer. Let’s move.”
    Something else moved, upwards and a little to his left. His reflexes had tautened instinctively before he recognised the flash of movement as only a shifting of bare brown flesh.
    From a precarious flat ledge of rock five or six yards up the slope, Esther called down: “What goes on?”
    “We’re going home,” Simon called back.
    “Wait for me.”
    She started to scramble down off the ledge. Suddenly she seemed much more undressed than she had before. He turned abruptly.
    “Come along, then.”
    He went back, around the bend, past the pool, past Ginny, to where they had left the horses, hearing Freddie’s footнsteps behind him but not looking back. There were no more shots, but he worked quickly checking the saddles and tightнening the cinches. The place was still just as picturesque and enchanting, but as an ambush it had the kind of topogнraphy where he felt that the defending team was at a great disadvantage.
    “What’s the hurry?” Ginny complained, coming up beside him; and he locked the buckle he was hauling on and gave the leather a couple of rapid loops through the three-quarter rig slots.
    “You heard the shot, didn’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    “It just missed Freddie. So we’re moving before they try again.”
    “Something’s always happening,” said Ginny resentfully, as if she had been shot at herself.
    “Life is like that,” said the Saint, untying her horse and handing the reins to her.
    As he turned to the next horse Esther came up. She was fully dressed again, except that her shirt was only half buttoned; and she looked smug and sulky at the same time.
    “Did you hear what happened, Ginny?” she said. “There was a man hiding up in the hills, and he took a shot at Freddie. And if he was where Simon thought he was, he must have seen me sunbathing without anything on.”
    ‘Tell Freddie that’s what made him miss,” Ginny sugнgested. “It might be