were leaving from the other side, together with the men too old to go out with the guerrillas. Yamamura was being abandoned until the outcome of battle made itself known.

The canyon that led up the mountain's groin had once been the deep-cut bed of a stream. Collapse of over-beetling rock had formed a vault over the stream, which was consequently underground. Soil had filtered into the rocks, and bamboo had taken root. In result the lower ravine was a green enfilade hardly wider than a hallway, the walls on either side rising squarely from its floor. Well within the pass, set into the left-hand wall as one rode down from Yamamura, was a niche very like the tokonoma or honored alcove of a Kansan home. In this alcove, some fifty feet from the bottom of the pass, was set the great bronze image of Buddha, the Daibutsu of Kansas.

Further down, below the Daibutsu-niche, the canyon became irregular. Along either side, some ten feet from the floor, were ledges marking the fracture planes along which ancient avalanches had calved. It was from these shelves that the Kansans hoped to ambush the men from First Regiment. The narrowness of the ravine, and the overhang of willow trees—these growing in clefts of rock, fingering their roots down to the subterranean stream—were enough, Hartford prayed, to prevent the veeto-platform's pilot from spotting the Kansans lying in wait with their blowguns.

Hartford disposed his troops on the shelves, checking to see that each man had a good field of fire and adequate cover. He glanced at the sun, the Kansan timepiece. It was between six and eight in the evening, he judged, the Hour of the Clock. He pressed his ear to the radio-receiver. Short-range, the safety-suit radio picked up only occasional orders from Axenite officers and non-coms. Twice Hartford caught the name, "Lieutenant Felix." He smiled, feeling mixed emotions. Felix had been his old Platoon Sergeant, and they would face each other in an hour or so as enemies. Very likely the fifty troopers chasing Ito Juro and his fellows toward the canyon included men of the Terrible Third Platoon, his old command. Hartford checked to see his bitcher worked and waited the arrival of the message-blabrigars with fresh news.

XI

The first bird arrived a few moments before the radio began coming in clear.

"Sakura," Hartford said, this being the prompt-word to which the blabrigar was trained to reply.

"Fifty men, sir; fifty men, sir; on the way, 

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