“Here they are.  Right ahead here,” continued Prince.

Followed a moment of suspense, then came the crashing of brush as Clanton moved after him.

“S-sh!  Ride softly, Jim.  We don’t want ’em to hear us an’ get away.”

“Tha’s right.  Tha’s sure right.  You said somethin’ then, Billie.  But they’ll not get away.  Haven’t I slept on their trail four years?  They’re mine at last.”

Prince was drawing him farther from the road.  But the danger was not yet over.  As the posse passed, some member of it might hear them, or young Clanton might hear it and gallop out to the road under the impression he was going to meet Dave Roush.  Billie twisted in and out of the brush, never for an instant letting his friend pull up.  On a moving horse one cannot hear so distinctly as on one standing still.

At last Billie began to breathe more easily.  The pursuers must have passed before this.  He could give his attention to the sick man.

Jim was clutching desperately to the saddle-horn.  The fever was gaining on him and the delirium worse.  He talked incessantly, sometimes incoherently.  From one subject to another he went, but always he came back to Dave Roush and his brother.  He dared them to stand up and fight.  He called on them to stop running, to wait for him.  Then he trailed off into a string of epithets usually ending in sobs of rage.

The sickness of the young man tore the heart of his companion.  Every instinct of kindness urged him to stop, make up a bed for the wounded boy, and let him rest from the agony of travel.  But he dared not stop yet.  He had to keep going till they reached a place of temporary safety.

With artful promises of immediate vengeance upon his enemies, by means of taunts at him as a quitter, through urgent proddings that reached momentarily the diseased mind, Prince kept him moving through the brush.  The sweat stood out on the white face of the young fellow shining ghastly in the moonlight.

After what seemed an interminable time they could see from a mesa the lights of Los Portales.  Billie left the town well to his right, skirted the pastures on the outskirts, and struck the river four miles farther down.

While they were still a long way from it the boy collapsed completely and slid from the saddle to which he had so long clung.  His friend uncinched and freed the sorrel, lifted the slack body to his own horse, and walked beside the animal to steady the lurching figure.

At the bank of the river he stopped and lifted the body to the ground.  It lay limp and slack where the cowpuncher set it down.  Through the white shoulder dressings a stain of red had soaked.  For a moment Billie was shaken by the fear that the Arizonian might be dead, but he rejected it as not at all likely.  Yet when he held his hand against the heart of the wounded man he was not sure that he could detect a beating.

From the river he brought water in his hat and splashed it into the white face.  He undid the shoulder bandages, soaked them in cold water, and rebound the wound.  Between the clenched teeth he forced a few drops of whiskey from his flask.