“Send horses up for them,” Dave said.  “You can take all the men back to camp with you except three to help me watch the fire.  Tell Mr. Crawford how things are.”

The men crept down the hill like veterans a hundred years old.  Ragged, smoke-blackened, and grimy, they moved like automatons.  So great was their exhaustion that one or two dropped out of line and lay down on the charred ground to sleep.  The desire for it was so overmastering that they could not drive their weighted legs forward.

A man on horseback appeared and rode up to Dave and Shorty.  The man was Bob Hart.  The red eyes in his blackened face were sunken and his coat hung on him in crisped shreds.  He looked down at the bodies lying side by side.  His face worked, but he made no verbal comment.

“We piled into a cave.  Some of the boys couldn’t stand it,” Dave explained.

Bob’s gaze took in his friend.  The upper half of his body was almost naked.  Both face and torso were raw with angry burns.  Eyebrows had disappeared and eyes were so swollen as to be almost closed.  He was gaunt, ragged, unshaven, and bleeding.  Shorty, too, appeared to have gone through the wars.

“You boys oughtta have the doc see you,” Hart said gently.  “He’s down at camp now.  One of Em’s men had an arm busted by a limb of a tree fallin’ on him.  I’ve got a coupla casualties in my gang.  Two or three of ’em runnin’ a high fever.  Looks like they may have pneumonia, doc says.  Lungs all inflamed from swallowin’ smoke....  You take my hawss and ride down to camp, Dave.  I’ll stick around here till the old man sends a relief.”

“No, you go down and report to him, Bob.  If Crawford has any fresh men I’d like mine relieved.  They’ve been on steady for ’most two days and nights.  Four or five can hold the fire here.  All they need do is watch it.”

Hart did not argue.  He knew how Dave stuck to a thing like a terrier to a rat.  He would not leave the ground till orders came from Emerson Crawford.

“Lemme go an’ report,” suggested Shorty.  “I wanta get my bronc an’ light out pronto.  Never can tell when Applegate might drap around an’ ask questions.  Me, I’m due in the hills.”

“All right,” agreed Bob.  “See Crawford himself, Shorty.”

The outlaw pulled himself to the saddle and cantered off.

“Best man in my gang,” Dave said, following him with his eyes.  “There to a finish and never a whimper out of him.  Dragged a man out of the fire when he might have been hustling for his own skin.”

“Shorty’s game,” admitted Hart.  “Pity he went bad.”

“Yes.  He told me he didn’t kill Harrigan.”

“Reckon Dug did that.  More like him.”

Half an hour later the relief came.  Hart, Dave, and the three fire-fighters who had stayed to watch rode back to camp.

Crawford had lost his voice.  He had already seen Hart since the fire had subsided, so his greeting was to Sanders.