It was dark, but not so dark as last night, there being no clouds to blot out the stars.  And the moon was slipping upward through the trees upon the mountain top when Thornton came at last to the lake.  As before, he was watchful and alert.  Clayton was Kid Bedloe’s friend, and Clayton had always struck him as a man in whom one could put little faith.  It was quite in keeping with what he knew that Jimmie’s note had been written at the instigation of Kid Bedloe himself and that he was to be led out here where Kid Bedloe and Ed might be in waiting for him.  It was quite possible, even probable.  But he thought it more than likely that for once Jimmie Clayton was acting in good faith.

The Jimmie Clayton whom he found alone a little after moonrise was very much as he had found him that other night.  The fugitive lay upon the bunk in the darkness of the dugout, and only when he was assured that it was Buck Thornton come to him did he light his stub of candle.  As before Thornton entered and closed the door after him to look down on the man with a sharp twinge of pity.

“How’re they coming, Jimmie?” he asked gently.

“Can’t you see?” replied Clayton with a nervous laugh.  “I’m all in, Buck.  All in.”

If ever a man looked to be “all in” it was poor little Jimmie Clayton.  He threw back his coat for Thornton to see.  There upon the side was the stain of blood hardly dry upon the shirt.  His eyes were hollow, sunken, fever-filled, his cheeks unthinkably drawn, yellow-white and sickly, the hand which fell back weakly from the exertion of opening his coat showed the bones thrust up as though they would pierce the skin.

“You’ve been shot again?” demanded the cowboy.

Jimmie shook his head.

“The same ol’ hole, Buck; Colt forty-five.  It won’t heal up, it breaks out all the time.  I can’t sleep with it, I can’t eat, I can’t set still.”  He had begun manfully, but now the little whimper came back into his voice, his shaking hand gripped Thornton’s arm feebly, and he cried tremulously, “I wisht I was dead, Buck.  Hones’ to Gawd, I wisht I was dead!”

“Poor little old Jimmie,” Thornton muttered just as he had muttered the words once before, gently, pityingly.  “Is there anything I can do, Jimmie.”

Jimmie drew back his hand and lay still for a little, his eyes seeming unnaturally large as he turned them upwards, filled at once with a sort of defiance and an abject, cringing terror.

“Nothin’,” he said a little sullenly.  His eyes dropped and ran to the fingers of his hand which were plucking nervously at his coat.  He parted his lips as though he would say something else and then closed them tightly; even his eyes shut tight for a moment.  Thornton watched him, waiting.  It was easy to see that Jimmie Clayton had upon the tip of his tongue something he wished to say, and that he hesitated ... through fear?

“What is it, Jimmie?” Thornton asked after a while.