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“Come on, Mack,” the S/Sgt said, still shooing half-heartedly. “Lets go.”

He let the mind, which at a great cost in Kentucky pride had been kept loose and open with the mineral oil of belief, constipate itself and close down into the old, narrow, clear, hard, crystal something which was the trademark of Harlan Kentucky and which was the only gift his father had ever given him in his whole life, and even that unwittingly, or he would probly tried to take it back.

“I said take your goddam hands out of your pockets,” the Cpl said disgustedly.

He jerked his hands out of his pockets, Alma’s Police .38 in the right one, and with the left one snatched the S/Sgt’s still shooing pistol and threw it sailing heavily across on the other side of the road, and with the right one bent the barrel of the .38 over the jaw of the helmeted Cpl.

And Prewitt, feeling airishly free in the arms and legs, without ropes, without handcuffs, without shackles, free to breathe too, without a strait jacket, feeling so free all over he was almost able to believe he was free, was running freely and without restriction into the night, into the levelness, into the darkness, of the Territory of Hawaii’s Waialae Golf Course. Treelessness, sand hills, scrubgrass, and all. There was a big sandtrap right around here someplace.

Running hard, sprinting, he flashed a look back over his shoulder and saw the two of them still there in the blue light of the headlights. They never should have done that, his mind registered automatically, they should have headed for the darkness first thing, he could shoot them both, even with this gun he did not know.

Then, in the middle of the split flash of the glance, he realized they did not know yet he had a gun, and were therefore not technically guilty of a mistake. At least not a reckless mistake. That made his sense of propriety feel a little less offended. Mistakes in knowledge were at least excusable. But a good soldier should never make a reckless mistake.

Fred the S/Sgt was yelling. “Back down to the corner. Theres a field phone station there.” The Cpl, his left hand holding his jaw, was just coming up shakily off his knees and there was the big red merry wink of his .45, before he was even clear up yet.

Prewitt quit looking and stopped sprinting and started the skirmisher’s zigzag, wanting to grin. They would measure up all right. Except for that one mistake of not getting out of the light, they were doing fine. And doing it fast. Where the hell was that sandtrap?

“All the men they got available,” Fred the S/Sgt was still yelling. “And alert all the beach positions. This guy wasnt no soldier.” The motor of the jeep roared. “No, not now, you fool!” Fred the S/Sgt yelled. “The light, first! The spot. Turn on the spot.”

Off to his left not far Prew saw the sandtrap.

Then the spotlight went on.

He stopped and turned around facing them.

Almost simultaneously, from the rider’s seat of the jeep, Harry’s Thompson gun batted its one big eye in a series of winks that had all the false coy merriness of a bloodshot one-eyed bar pickup.

Prewitt was standing facing them, almost on the lip of his sandtrap.

Maybe it was what Fred the S/Sgt yelled about alerting the beach positions. He had the Infantryman’s abhorrence of being shot at by his own outfit. Or maybe it was that about getting out every man available. There was still yet the causeway over the salt marsh and he saw in his mind the blue-lighted jeeps crowding on it waiting, till it looked like a rich man’s Christmas Tree in the front yard and he had been running from them a long time now he was out of breath now. Or perhaps it might have been because he felt such a strong affection for them suddenly the way they were handling it, almost proud of them, a confidence in them, they were really handling it well, it was a sound competent piece of work. He could not have done better himself. They were competent. Or, maybe it was just, simply, that last thing the S/Sgt had