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 eyes to mine with the victory of “him that overcometh” shining in their blue depths.

“If I could make you live, I’d do it, Fred. If you have any word to say, be quick about it now.  Your time is short.”

The sweetness of that gentle voice I hear sometimes to-day in the low notes of song-birds, and the gentle swish of refreshing summer showers.

Ferdinand Ramero lifted his cold blue eyes and looked at the man bending over him.

“Leave me here—­forgotten—­”

“Not of God.  His Mercy endureth forever,” Jondo replied.

But there was no repentance, no softening of the hard, imperious heart.

We left him there, pulling down the loose earth from the steep sides of the draw to cover him from all the frowning elements of the plains.  And when we went back to the waiting train Jondo reported, grimly: 

“No enemy in sight."

We laid Bill Banney beside the poisoned spring, from whose bitter waters he had saved our lives.  So martyrs filled the unknown graves that made the milestones of the way in the days of commerce-building on the old Santa Fe Trail.

The next spring was not far ahead, as Bill’s note had said, but the stars were thick above us and the desolate land was full of shadows before we reached it—­a thirst-mad, heart-sore crowd trailing slowly on through the gloom of the night.

Beverly was waiting for us and the refreshing moisture of the air above a spring seemed about him.

“I thought you’d never come.  Where’s Bill?  There’s water here.  I made the spring myself,” he shouted, as we came near.

The spring that he had digged for us was in the sandy bed of a dry stream, with low, earth-banks on either side.  It was full of water, hardly clear, but plentiful, and slowly washing out a bigger pool for itself as it seeped forth.

“There is poison in the real spring down there.”  Beverly pointed toward the diminished fountain we had expected to find.  “I’ve worked since noon at this.”

We drank, and life came back to us.  We pitched camp, and then listened to Beverly’s story of the sweet and bitter waters of the trail that day.  And all the while it seemed as if Bill Banney was just out of sight and might come galloping in at any moment.