ng free of
any visible support of trunks, and the rescuers saw that they were near
the end of their journey.

There was a faint sound of a shot; then of another shot and another.
After that, the radiant, baffling silence of daybreak on uninhabited
wastes, when the very active glory of the spreading, intensifying light
ought, one feels, to bring paeans of orchestral splendor. It set
desperation in the hearts of the riders, which was communicated to weary
ponies driven to a last effort of speed. And still no more shots. The
silence spoke the end of some tragedy with the first streaks from the
rising sun clearing a target to a waiting marksman's eye.

Around the cotton-woods was no sign of human movement; nothing but
inanimate, dark spots which developed into prostrate human forms, in
pantomimic expression of the story of that night's work done in the
moonlight and finished with the first flush of morning. Two of the
outstretched figures were lying head to head a few yards apart on either
side of the water-hole. The one on the side toward the ridge was
recognized as Jack, still as death. Another a short distance behind him,
at the sound of hoof-beats looked up with face blanched despite its dark
skin, the parched lips stretched over the teeth; but in Firio's eyes
there was still fire, as he whispered, "All right!" before he sank back
unconscious. A wound in his shoulder had been bandaged, but the wrist of
his gun hand lay beside a fresh red spot on the earth.

Jack had a bullet hole in the upper left arm plugged with a bit of
cotton; and a deep furrow across the temple, which was bleeding. His
rigid fingers were still gripping his six-shooter. He lay partly on his
side, facing Leddy, who had rolled over on his back dead.

Mary and Dr. Patterson dropped from their horses simultaneously. The
doctor pressed his hand over Jack's heart, to find it still beating.

"Jack!" they whispered. "Jack!" they called aloud.

He roused slightly, lifting his weary eyelids and gazing at them as if
they were uncertain shadows who wanted some kind of an explanation from
him which he had not the strength to give.

"We must drink--blaze away, Leddy," he murmured. "I'm coming down after
the stars go out--close--close as you like--we must drink!"

"No vital hit!" said the doctor; while Mary bringing water assisted him
to bathe the wounds before he dressed them. "No, not from a bullet!" he
added, after the dressing was finished and he had o