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 one hand on Jack’s hot brow and the other on his pulse.

Then he attended to Firio, who was talking incoherently: 

“Take water-hole—­boil coffee in the morning—­quail for dinner, Senor Jack—­si, si!”

When they had moved Jack and Firio into the shadow of the cotton-woods and forced water down their throats, Firio revived enough to recognize those around him and to cry out an inquiry about Jack; but Jack himself continued in a stupor, apparently unconscious of his surroundings and scarcely alive except for breathing.  Yet, when litters of blankets and rifles tied together had been fashioned and attached to the pack-saddles of tandem burros, as he was lifted into place for the return he seemed to understand that he was starting on a journey; for he said, disjointedly: