No more sounds caught Jean's ears.

The suspense, then, grew unbearable.

It was not that he could not wait for an enemy to appear, but that he could not wait to learn what had happened.

Every moment that he stayed there, with hands like steel on his rifle, with eyes of a falcon, but added to a dreadful, dark certainty of disaster.

A rifle shot swiftly followed by revolver shots! What could, they mean?
Revolver shots of different caliber, surely fired by different men! What could they mean?
It was not these shots that accounted for Jean's dread, but the yell which had followed.