“Why, it’s Chance—­of the Concho!”

“Yes, lady.  What is left of him.”

“Do you work for the Concho?  Won’t you take my horse?”

“I’m assistant cook at the camp.  No, thanks, lady.  Ridin’ might joggle him and start him to bleedin’.  I can carry him so he’ll be easier-like.”

“But how did it happen?”

“I dunno.  Chance chased the wolf and they went to it where I was explorin’ one of them caves.  I guess I better be goin’.”

The girl reined her horse around and rode down the valley trail, pausing occasionally to watch the tall figure climbing the canon with that shapeless burden in his arms.  “I wonder if any other man on the Concho would have done that?” she asked herself.  And Sundown, despite his more or less terrifying appearance, won her estimation for kindness at once.

Slowly he climbed the canon trail, resting at each level.  The dog hung a limp, dead weight in his arms.  Midway up the trail Sundown rested again, and gazed down into the valley.  He imagined he could discern the place of the fight.  “That there wolf,” he soliloquized, “he was some fighter, too.  Mebby he didn’t like to get licked any more than Chance, here.  Wonder what they was fightin’ about?  I dunno.  But, Gee Gosh, she was one dandy scrap!”

At the top of the canon wall he again rested.  He expected to be discharged for being late, but solaced himself with the thought that if he could save Chance, it was worth the risk.

The riders had returned to the chuck-wagon when Sundown arrived lugging the inert body of the wolf-dog.  They gathered around and asked brief questions.  Sundown, busy washing the dog’s wounds, answered as well as he could.  His account of the fight did not suffer for lack of embellishment, and while he did not absolutely state that he had taken a hand in the fight, his story implied it.

“Don’t see nothin’ on you to show you been in a scrap,” remarked a young puncher.

“That’s because you can’t see in deep enough,” retorted Sundown.  “If I wasn’t in every jump of that fight, me heart was.”

“Better shoot him and put him out of his sufferin’,” suggested the puncher.

Sundown rose from beside the dog.  Shoot Chance?  Not so long as he could keep between the dog and the cowboy’s gun.  The puncher, half in jest, reached for his holster.  Sundown’s overwrought nerves gave way.  He dropped to his knees and lifted his long arms imploringly.  “Don’t!  Don’t!” he wailed.  “He ain’t dead!  Don’t shoot my pal!”

Bud Shoop, who had kept silent, shouldered the puncher aside.  “Cut it out, Sinker,” he growled.  “Can’t you sabe that Sundown means it?”

Later in the evening, and fortified with a hearty meal.  Sundown gave a revised version of the fight, wherein his participation was modified, though the story lost nothing in re-telling.  And, indeed, his own achievement, of lugging Chance up the canon trail, awakened a kind of respect among the easy-going cowboys.  To carry an eighty-pound dog up that trail took sand!  Again Sundown had unconsciously won their respect.  Nothing was said about his late return.  And his horse had found its way back to the camp.