the mustache. "Pretty fair-sized boy. About my size when I was
eighteen."

Higgins was turning Willy over on his back.

"My God! Look at him!" he cried, pointing to the Indian's swollen face
with its protruding tongue and popeyes. "They've choked the poor devil
to death! You cheap, dirty greaser!" he roared, turning upon his
aversion, Ramos. "There was a good boy, that Indian; and if you've
done him dirt I'll beat your greasy head off with your left leg!"

"Hold on, Hig!" Payne held his engineer back. "There's no sign of a
hand on his throat."

"But look at his face! Can't you tell by that?"

Roger bent over the Indian and felt for a heartbeat.

"He's alive!"

"Is he?" laughed Garman. "That's important perhaps--to Willy."

"Get some water, Hig. That's the stuff; souse him. Ah! Didn't he
breathe?"

"Tried to. Can't you pull his tongue down a little so he can git air?"

"Get some more water! He's breathing!"

"Hi, Willy!" cried Higgins, tilting the water against the distorted
mouth. "Come to, old boy; come to!"

A few drops of the cooling stuff trickled into the Indian's throat,
stirring the spark of life that was beginning to glow again in him. A
tremor convulsed his chest as the lungs sucked spasmodically at the
tiny stream of air entering the swollen throat. A gurgle, a deep sigh,
and Willy's unconscious body was taking in the life-giving air in short
gulps.

"By the great smoked fish, he'll make a live of it!" jubilated Higgins.
"And the man who did it--don't care who he is--is one son of a
she-skunk, net."

Garman, after his morsel of broiled venison, was lighting a large,
brown cigar, moving the match round and round the tip to make sure it
burned evenly. He drew in a long breath and, opening his mouth,
allowed the fat smoke to ooze up through his mustache, into his
wide-open nostrils, over his half-closed eyes.

"Willy Tiger is subject to fits--of a suffocating nature," he said.
"He suffers from a too sensitive conscience. The fits come upon him
when he has made a mistake and gets caught at it."

"He was choked!" said Payne bluntly. "He was suffocated in some
damnable fashion that left no mark, and he would have been dead in
another five minutes."

Garman nodded through another cloud of smoke.

"Five minutes! Sooner, perhaps. I thought he was dead. He is going
to die in one of those fits some day, that's sure--if he lives to make
more mistakes."

The Indian began