ny lying dead across the trail. And near it
Bill himself, with bloated face and bleared eyes, muttering
half-coherently:

"Water-hole! Poison! Don't drink!"

And then he babbled of the muddy Missouri, and the Kentucky blue grass,
and cold mountain springs in the passes of the Gloriettas, warning us
thickly of "death down there."

"Down there," beside the little spring shelved in by shale at the lower
edge of the swell, we found a tiny cairn built of clumps of sod and bits
of shale. Fastened on it was a scrap from Bill's note-book with the
words

Spring poisoned. Bev gone for water not very far on.--BILL.

So Bill had drunk the poisoned water and had tried to reach us. But for
fear he might not do it, he had scrawled this warning and left it here.
Brave Bill! How madly he had staggered round the place and threshed the
ground in agony when he tried to mount his poisoned pony, and his first
thought was for us. The plains made men see big. Jondo had told me they
could do it. Poor Bill, moaning for water now and tossing in agony in
Jondo's wagon! The Comanches had been cunning in their malice. How we
hated them as we stood looking at the waters of that poisoned spring!

Rex Krane's big, gentle hands were holding Bill's. Rex always had a
mother's heart; while Jondo read the ground with searching glance.

"We will wait here a little while. Bev will report soon, I hope. Come,
Gail," he said to me. "Here is something we will follow now."

A single trail led far away from the beaten road toward a stretch of
coarse dry yucca and loco-weeds that hid a little steep-sided draw
across the plains. At the bottom of it a man lay face downward beside a
dead pony. We scrambled down, shattering the dry earth after us as we
went. Jondo gently lifted the body and turned it face upward. It was
Ferdinand Ramero.

The big plainsman did not cry out, nor drop his hold, but his face
turned gray, and only the dying man saw the look in the blue eyes gazing
into his. Ramero tried to draw away, fear, and hate, and the old
dominant will that ruled his life, strong still in death. As he lay at
the feet of the man whose life hopes he had blasted, he expected no
mercy and asked for none.

"You have me at last. I didn't put the poison in that spring. I would
not have drunk it if I had. It was the one below I fixed for you. And
I'm in your power now. Be quick about it."

For one long minute Jondo looked down at his enemy. Then he lifted his