‘Give me your horse, Dave,’ he said quietly.  ’I’m on my way home.  You’ll find Barbee’s down under the cliff.’

Dave Terril was quick to obey.  But before his spurred boot-heel had struck the turf Helen had came running through the men about Howard, her two hands out, her voice thrilling and vibrant as she cried: 

’There is only one man among you, one real man, and that is Alan Howard!  He was not wrong; he was right!  And no matter what happens to the gold, I had rather have a man like Alan Howard do a thing like that for me than have all of the gold in the mountains!’

Her excitement, too, ran high, her words came tripping over one another, heedless and extravagant.  But Howard suddenly glowed, and when she put her hands out to him he took them both and squeezed them hard.

‘Why, God bless you, you’re a brick!’ he cried warmly.  ’And, in spite of the rest of ’em, I’m glad I did make a fool of myself!’

From his wounded arm a trickle of blood had run down to his hand.  Helen cried out as she saw the smear across the sleeve of his shirt.

‘He’s hurt!’ she exclaimed.

He laughed at her.

‘It would be worth it if I were,’ he told her gently.  ‘But I’m not.’  He slipped his foot into the stirrup.  ‘Dave,’ he said over his shoulder, ’you and Chuck had better look at Monte.  I don’t know how bad his hurt is.  Do what ever you can for him.  If I’m wanted, I’m at the ranch.’

But Helen, carried out of herself by the excitement of the moment and unconscious that she was clinging to him, pleaded with him not to go yet.

‘Wait until we decide what we are going to do,’ she told him earnestly.  ‘Won’t you, please?’

‘You bet I will!’ he answered, his voice ringing with his eagerness to do anything she might ask of him.  ’If you want me to stay, here I stick.’

He dropped the reins and with her at his side turned back to the others.  Already two men were kneeling beside Monte Devine.  Chuck Evans, who had got there first, looked up and announced: 

’He’s come to, Al.  He looks sick, but he ain’t hurt much, I’d say for a guess.  Not for a tough gent like him.  How about it, Monte?’

Monte growled something indistinct, but when at the end of it he demanded a drink of whisky his voice was both clear and steady.  Chuck laughed.  Thereafter those who knew most of such matters looked over both Monte’s and Ed True’s injuries and gave what first-aid they could.  It was Chuck’s lively opinion that both gents were due for a little quiet spell at a hospital, but that they’d be getting in trouble again inside a month or so.

‘You can’t kill them kind,’ he concluded lightly.  ‘Not so easy.’

They called to Bettins, but he held back upon the far side of the gulch and finally withdrew and disappeared.  Then Longstreet, who had been restless but quiet-tongued for ten minutes, exclaimed quickly: