Van fetched a pint of water in his hat.  He sprinkled it roughly in the convict’s face, and, propping up his head, helped him to take a drink.

Barger could not lift a hand, or utter a word.  Van recoiled the rope, secured it on the saddle, then sat down to await the man’s recovery.  It was slow.  Barger’s speech was the first returning function.  It was faint, and weak, and blasphemous.

“It’s hell,” he said, “when God Almighty turns agin a man.  Ain’t the sheriff’s enough—­without a thing like that?” His thumb made a gesture towards the river, which he cursed abominably—­cursing it for a trap, a seeming benefit, here in the desert, ready to eat a man alive.

Van made no reply.  He rather felt the man was justified—­at least in some opinions.  Towards Barger he felt no anger, but rather a pity instead.

After a time the convict moved sufficiently to prop himself up against the bank.  He looked at Van dully.  This was the man who had “sent him up”—­and saved him from the sand.  There was much that lay between them, much that must always lie.  He had no issues to dodge.  There was nothing cowardly in Barger, despite his ways.

“I nearly got you, up yonder,” he said, and he jerked his thumb towards the mountains, to indicate the pass where he and Van had met an hour before.

Van nodded.  “You sure did.  Who told you to look for me here?”

Barger closed his eyes.  “Nothing doing.”  He could not have been forced to tell.

Van smiled.  “That’s all right.”  There was no resentment in the tone.

Barger looked at him curiously.

“What for did you pull me out?”

“Don’t know,” Van confessed.  “Perhaps I hated to have the quicksand cheat the pen.”

“Must have had some good reason,” agreed the prostrate man.  He was silent for a moment, and then he added:  “I s’pose I’m your meat.”

As before, Van nodded:  “I reckon you are.”

Barger spat.  It was his first vigorous indication of returning strength.

“Someways,” he said, “I’d rather you’d shoot me here, right now, than send me back to the pen.  But I couldn’t stand fer that!” He made his characteristic gesture towards the river.  As Van made no comment the fellow concluded:  “I s’pose you need the reward.”

Van was aware there was ten thousand dollars as a price on the convict’s head, a fact which he someway resented.  To-day, more than at any time within his life, he felt out of sympathy with law—­with man’s law, made against man.

He began to pull off his boots.

“No,” he said, “I don’t want any State’s reward, much less express company money.  Maybe if it wasn’t for those rewards I’d take you into camp.”  He inverted his boots and shook out a few grains of sand.

Barger glanced at him suspiciously.

“What are you goin’ to do with me, then, now you’ve got me to rights?”