As he ascended the gentle slope of the draw he heard a quick, blunt sound, as though some one had struck a drum and immediately muffled the reverberations with the hand.  He was too deeply immersed in himself to pay much attention to this.  Topping the rise, the fresh vista of rolling mesa, the far blue hills, and a white dot—­the distant Concho—­awakened him to a realization of his whereabouts.  Again he heard that peculiar, dull sound.  He lifted his horse to a lope and swept along, the dancing shadow at his side shortening as noon overtook him.  He was about to dismount and partake of the luncheon the kindly Senora had prepared for him, when he changed his mind.  “Lunch and hunch makes a rhyme,” he announced.  “And I got ’em both.  Guess I’ll jog along and eat at the Concho.  Mebby I’ll get there in two, three hours.”

As the white dot took on a familiar outline and the eastern wall of the canon of the Concho showed sharply against the sky, he saw a horseman, strangely doubled up in the saddle, riding across the mesa toward the ranch-house.  Evidently he also was going to the Concho.  Possibly it was Bud, or Hi Wingle, or Lone Johnny.  Following an interval of attending strictly to the trail he raised his eyes.  He pulled his horse up and sat blinking.  Where there had been a horse and rider there was but the horse, standing with lowered head.  He shaded his eyes with his palm and gazed again.  There stood the horse.  The man had disappeared.  “Fell into one of them Injun graves,” remarked Sundown.  “Guess I’ll go see.”

It took much longer than he had anticipated to come up with the riderless horse.  He recognized it as one of the Concho ponies.  Almost beneath the animal lay a huddled something.  Sundown’s scalp tingled.  Slowly he got from his horse and stalked across the intervening space.  He led the pony from the tumbled shape on the ground.  Then he knelt and raised the man’s shoulders.  Sinker, one of the Concho riders, groaned and tore at the shirt over his stomach.  Then Sundown knew.  He eased the cowboy back and called his name.  Slowly the gray lids opened.  “It’s me, Sundown!  Who done it?”

The cowboy tried to rise on his elbow.  Sundown supported his head, questioning him, for he knew that Sinker had but little time left to speak.  The wounded man writhed impotently, then quieted.

“God, Sun!” he moaned, “they got me.  Tell Jack—­Mexican—­Loring—­sheep at—­waterhole.  Tried to bluff—­’em off—­orders not to shoot.  They got orders to shoot—­all right.  Tell Jack—­Guess I’m bleedin’ inside—­So-long—­pardner.”

The dying man writhed from Sundown’s arms and rolled to his face, cursing and clutching at the grass in agony.  Sundown stood over him, his hat off, his gaze lifted toward the cloudless sky, his face white with a new and strange emotion.  He raised his long arms and clenched his hands.  “God A’mighty,” he whispered, rocking back and forth, “I got to tell You that sech things is wrong.  And from what I seen sence I come to this country, You don’t care.  But some of us does care . . . and I reckon we got to do somethin’ if You don’t.”