been shot
through the heart, but the Yaqui was still alive. Moreover, he was
conscious and staring up at Gale with great, strange, somber eyes,
black as volcanic slag.

"Gringo good--no kill," he said, in husky whisper.

His speech was not affirmative so much as questioning.

"Yaqui, you're done for," said Gale, and his words were positive. He
was simply speaking aloud his mind.

"Yaqui--no hurt--much," replied the Indian, and then he spoke a strange
word--repeated it again and again.

An instinct of Gale's, or perhaps some suggestion in the husky, thick
whisper or dark face, told Gale to reach for his canteen. He lifted the
Indian and gave him a drink, and if ever in all his life he saw
gratitude in human eyes he saw it then. Then he examined the injured
Yaqui, not forgetting for an instant to send wary, fugitive glances on
all sides. Gale was not surprised. The Indian had three wounds--a
bullet hole in his shoulder, a crushed arm, and a badly lacerated leg.
What had been the matter with him before being set upon by the raider
Gale could not be certain.

The ranger thought rapidly. This Yaqui would live unless left there to
die or be murdered by the Mexicans when they found courage to sneak
back to the well. It never occurred to Gale to abandon the poor
fellow. That was where his old training, the higher order of human
feeling, made impossible the following of any elemental instinct of
self-preservation. All the same, Gale knew he multiplied his perils a
hundredfold by burdening himself with a crippled Indian. Swiftly he set
to work, and with rifle ever under his hand, and shifting glance spared
from his task, he bound up the Yaqui's wounds. At the same time he
kept keen watch.

The Indians' burros and the horses of the raiders were all out of
sight. Time was too valuable for Gale to use any in what might be a
vain search. Therefore, he lifted the Yaqui upon Sol's broad shoulders
and climbed into the saddle. At a word Sol dropped his head and
started eastward up the trail, walking swiftly, without resentment for
his double burden.

Far ahead, between two huge mesas where the trail mounted over a pass,
a long line of dust clouds marked the position of the horses that had
escaped from the corral. Those that had been stolen would travel
straight and true for home, and perhaps would lead the others with
them. The raiders were left on the desert without guns or mounts.

Blanco Sol walked or jog-tro