flattened summit which had afforded him protection from the bullets the man with the rifle had been sending at him—was a man.
The man was apparently about fifty, with a seamed, pain-lined face. His beard was stained with dust, his hair was gray with it; his clothing looked as though he had been dragged through it. He was hatless, and one of his boots was off. The foot had been bandaged with a handkerchief, and through the handkerchief the dark stains of a wound appeared.
The man’s shirt was open in front; and the rider saw that another wound gaped in his chest, near the heart. The man had evidently made some attempt to care for that wound, too, for a piece of cloth from his shirt had been cut away, to permit him to get at the wound easily.
The man’s left side seemed to be helpless, for the arm was twisted queerly, the palm of the hand turned limply upward; but when the rider came upon him the man was trying to tuck a folded paper into one of the cylinders of a pistol.
He had laid the weapon in the sand, and with his right hand was working with the cylinder and the paper. When he saw the rider he sneered and ceased working with the pistol, looking up into the rider’s face, his eyes glowing with defiance.
“No chance for that even, eh?” he said, glancing at the paper and the pistol. “Things is goin’ plumb wrong!”
He sagged back, resting his weight on the right elbow, and looked steadily at the rider—the look of a wounded animal defying his pursuers.
“Get goin’!” he jeered. “Do your damnedest! I heard that sneak, Dolver, yappin’ to you. You’re ‘Drag’ Harlan—gun-fighter, outlaw, killer! I’ve heard of you,” he went on as he saw Harlan scowl and stiffen. “Your reputation has got all over. I reckon you’re in the game to salivate me.”
Harlan sheathed his gun.
“You’re talkin’ extravagant, mister man.” And now he permitted a cold smile to wreathe his lips. “If it’ll do you any good to know,” he added, “I’ve just put Dolver out of business.”
“I heard that, too,” declared the man, laughing bitterly. “I heard you tellin’ Dolver. He killed your partner—or somethin’. That’s personal, an’ I ain’t interested. Get goin’—the sooner the better. If you’d hand it to me right now, I’d be much obliged to you; for I’m goin’ fast. This hole in my chest—which I got last night while I was sleepin’—will do the business without any help from you.”
After a pause for breath, the man began to speak again, railing at his would-be murderers. He was talking ramblingly when there came a sound from the opposite side of the rock—a grunt, a curse, and, almost instantly, a shriek.
The wounded man raised himself and threw a glance of startled inquiry at Harlan: “What’s that?”
Harlan watched the man steadily.
“I reckon that’ll be that man Laskar,” he said slowly. “I lifted his gun an’ his rifle, an’ Dolver’s gun, an’ throwed them under Purgatory—my horse. Laskar has tried to get them, an’ Purgatory’s raised some objection.”
He stepped back and peered around the rock. Laskar was lying in the sand near the base of the rock, doubled up and groaning loudly, while Purgatory, his nostrils distended, his eyes ablaze, was standing over the weapons that lay in the sand, watching the groaning man malignantly.
Harlan returned to the wounded man, to find that he had collapsed and was breathing heavily.
For some minutes Harlan stood, looking down at him; then he knelt in the sand beside him and lifted his head. The man’s eyes were closed, and Harlan laid his head down again and examined the wound in his chest.
He shook his head as he got up, went to Purgatory, and got some water, which he used to wipe away the dust and blood which had become matted over the wound. He shook his head again after bathing the wound. The wound meant death for the man within a short time. Yet Harlan forced some water into the half-open mouth and bathed the man’s face with it.
For a long time after Harlan ceased to work with him the man lay in a stupor-like silence, limp and motionless, though his eyes opened occasionally, and by the light in them Harlan knew the man was aware of what he had been doing.
The sun was going now; it had become a golden, blazing ball which was sinking over the peaks of some distant mountains, its fiery rays stabbing the pale azure of the sky with brilliantly glowing shafts that threw off ever-changing seas of color that blended together in perfect harmony.
Harlan alternately watched the wounded man and Laskar.
Laskar was still groaning, and finally Harlan walked to him and pushed him with a contemptuous foot.
“Get up, you sneak!” he ordered. And Laskar, groaning, holding his chest—where Purgatory’s hoofs had struck him—staggered to his feet and looked with piteously pleading eyes at the big man who stood near him, unmoved by the spectacle of suffering he presented.
And when he found that Harlan gave him no sympathy, he cursed horribly. This drew a cold threat from Harlan.
“Shut your rank mouth or I’ll turn Purgatory loose on you—again. Lookin’ for sympathy, eh? How much sympathy did you give that hombre who’s cashin’ in behind the rocks? None—damn you!”
It was the first flash of feeling Harlan had exhibited, and Laskar shrank from him in terror.
But Harlan followed him, grasping him by a shoulder and gripping it with iron fingers, so that Laskar screamed with pain.
“Who is that man?” Harlan motioned toward the rock.
“Lane Morgan. He owns the Rancho Seco—about forty miles south of Lamo,” returned Laskar after a long look into Harlan’s eyes.
“Who set you guys onto him—what you wantin’ him for?”
“I don’t know,” whined Laskar. “Day before yesterday Dolver an’ me meets up in Lamo, an’ Dolver asks me to help him give Morgan his pass-out checks on the ride over to Pardo—which Morgan’s intendin’ to make. I ain’t got any love for Morgan, an’ so I took Dolver up.”
“You’re a liar!”
Harlan’s fingers were sinking into Laskar’s shoulder again, and once more the man screamed with pain and impotent fury.
“I swear—” began Laskar.
Harlan’s grin was bitterly contemptuous. He placed the other hand on Laskar’s shoulder and forced the man to look into his eyes.
“You’re a liar, but I’m lettin’ you off. You’re a sneak with Greaser blood in you. I don’t ever want to see you again. I’m goin’ to Lamo—soon as this man Morgan cashes in. I’ll be there some time tomorrow. Lamo wouldn’t please me none if I was to find you there when I ride in. You slope, now—an’ keep on hittin’ the breeze until there ain’t no more of it. I’d blow you apart if this man Morgan was anything to me. But it ain’t my game unless I see you again.”
He watched until Laskar, still holding his chest, walked to where the two horses were concealed, and mounted one of them. When Laskar, leaning over the pommel of the saddle, had grown dim in
