They approached a low ridge and worked up a winding cattle trail.  On the crest Lorry reined up.  The man sat down, breathing heavily.

“What you callin’ yourself?” asked Lorry.

“A dam’ fool.”

“I knew that.  Anything else?”

“Waco—­mebby.”

“Waco, eh?  Well, that’s an insult to Texas.  What’s your idea in holdin’ up wimmin-folk, anyhow?”

“Mebby you’d hold up anybody if you hadn’t et since yesterday morning.”

“Think I believe that?”

“Suit yourself.  You got me down.”

“Well, you can get up and get movin’.”

The man rose.  He shuffled forward, limping heavily.  Occasionally he stopped and turned to meet a level gaze that was impersonal; that promised nothing.  Lorry would have liked to let the other ride.  The man was suffering—­and to ride would save time.  But the black, a rangy, quick-stepping animal, was faster than Gray Leg.  But what if the man did escape?  No one need know about it.  Yet Lorry knew that he was doing right in arresting him.  In fact, he felt a kind of secret pride in making the capture.  It would give him a name among his fellows.  But was there any glory in arresting such a man?

Lorry recalled the other’s wild shot as he was whirled through the brush.  “He sure tried to get me!” Lorry argued.  “And any man that’d hold up wimmin ought to be in the calaboose—­”

The trail meandered down the hillside and out across a barren flat.  Halfway across the flat the trail forked.  Lorry had ceased to whistle.  At the fork his pony stopped of its own accord.  The man turned questioningly.  Lorry gestured toward the right-hand trail.  The man staggered on.  The horses fretted at the slow pace.  Keen to anticipate some trickery, Lorry hardened himself to the other’s condition.  Perhaps the man was hungry, sick, suffering.  Well, a mile beyond was the water-hole.  The left-hand trail led directly to Stacey, but there was no water along that trail.

They moved on across a stretch of higher land that swept in a gentle, sage-dotted slope to the far hills.  Midway across the slope was a bare spot burning like white fire in the desert sun.  It was the water-hole.  The trail became paralleled by other trails, narrow and rutted by countless hoofs.

Within a hundred yards of the water-hole the prisoner collapsed.  Lorry dismounted and went for water.

The man drank, and Lorry helped him up and across the sand to the rim of the water-hole.  The man gazed at the shimmering pool with blurred eyes.

Lorry rolled a cigarette.  “Roll one?” he queried.

The man Waco took the proffered tobacco and papers.  His weariness seemed to vanish as he smoked.  “That pill sure saved my life,” he asserted.

“How much you reckon your life’s worth?”