Run for their lives, and leave Jim Silver dying there among the shadows of the trees?
“Save your breath,” said Wayland shortly. “I’m not leaving you, Silver, no matter what happens.”
“You fool!” whispered Silver weakly.
Up from the rear came the struggling mustang of Lovell. And Lovell’s voice called:
“Silver, are you hurt?”
“He’s badly hurt. We’ve got to pull up and fight it out with the three of ‘em,” said Wayland. “Silver’s out of it. He’s fought enough for other people. Now we’ve got a chance to fight for him!”
Lovell reined his horse closer and leaned far out from the saddle to peer at the limp form of Silver, and suddenly he exclaimed:
“He’s got it! He’s done for! Silver’s gone!”
Gone? Well, perhaps he was. With a sick heart, Wayland had been feeling the trickling of hot blood out of the body of Jim Silver. Jim Silver apparently was dying, and it was plain that Lovell was far from displeased.
“He can’t lift a hand!” said Lovell. “Pass me the saddlebag, Wayland. I’ll carry it for you. I’ll stick with you, too. The pair of us, we’ll get clear. We’ll fight our way through.”
They had climbed up the slope through the woods until they came to a canyon that gave them, for a moment, easier footing, and now they were passing many small, dark mouths of side cuts that sliced back from the main throat of the ravine.
“We’ll take him in here,” said Wayland, and they came to a long and narrow cleft that promised to run back for a considerable distance through the mountain. “We’ll take him in here. They’ve got no noses to follow our scent, and maybe they won’t be able to follow the trail with their eyes till morning.”
“You fool,” cried Lovell, “they’ll just bottle us up, in there! Let Silver drop. He’s done for a lot of others, and now his turn has come. Let him drop, and come along with me. Man, we’ve got half a million to ride for. Are you going to throw us away on a dead one?”
But Wayland already had swerved big Parade to the side, with a swing of his body, and they were passing straight back into the close, thick darkness of the ravine.
XXIII—THE RAVINE
The voice of Jim Silver, pitched very low, murmured at the ear of Wayland like soundless thought rising in his own mind: “Let me down. You’ve done enough. I know that your heart’s right. No use throwing yourself away when you can’t really help me.”
“Listen,” said Wayland, for he felt himself weakening under the steady flow of Silver’s persuasion. “Listen to me. It was me being a clumsy fool that brought you into the trouble. You came to save my neck. You could have had the saddlebag for the taking, but you took me along, too. And then I blundered and got Mantry’s eye, and you absorbed the bullet that should have been for me. Now you tell me to run off and leave you alone. Well, I won’t run off. Don’t persuade me. It’s hard enough for me to try to do what’s right without arguing about it.”
A glint of stronger moonlight was reflected from the shining face of a cliff of quartz, and by that strange light, Wayland saw the eyes of Silver had closed and that his pale lips were smiling a little.
“All right,” said Silver. “It’s better to die like a white man than to keep on living like a sneak. I won’t argue any more.”
“We’re going to cut through this ravine. We’re going to get out on the high ground and bed you down in a corner where Bray and the rest will never find you. We’re going to stop your bleeding. And a month from now, you and I will be in Elkdale eating beef-steak and laughing about the scare we’re going through now.”
That optimistic speech had hardly stopped sounding from the lips of Wayland when they turned a corner and found that the canyon pitched out to nothing, suddenly. Straight before them there was a slope of seventy degrees or more. It went up and up, endlessly, to the very peak of the mountain.
It might be that Parade could climb that slope alone. But it was certain that he could never manage it with a man on his back.
Wayland halted the horse and looked helplessly around him. Lovell appeared, fuming, groaning, talking low as though he feared the enemy were already in hearing distance.
“You see what you’ve done? You’ve bottled us up!” he gasped. “I never heard of such a fool. Bottled up two living gents and one dead one—and half a million dollars of good, clean money!”
“Watch him!” whispered Silver to Wayland. “Watch his guns!”
Wayland slipped suddenly out of the saddle and put Parade between him and Lovell.
“I’m taking Silver off the horse,” he said. “Watch the mouth of the ravine. We’ll talk things over. We’ll try to find a way out, man!”
He took the weight of Silver over his shoulder, as he spoke, and lowered him from the saddle. Silver stood beside him, one loose, big arm cast over the shoulders of Wayland, and his head sagging down. The tremor of his weakness Wayland could feel. And the irregular breathing of Silver told of the pain that he was enduring.
Off to the side, there was a sort of natural penthouse, where the bottom of the rock gave back. And into this, Wayland supported Silver and stretched him on the ground.
Lovell followed, still arguing, but Wayland had slung the saddlebag over his shoulder and now he dropped it between the prostrate form of Silver and the rock wall.
Lovell said, his voice whining as he strove to make it persuasive: “We going to throw ourselves away for a dead man. We’re going to “
“Wait,” said Wayland. “I’m not fool enough to throw myself away for a dead man. We’ll tie up his wound. That’s all. We’ll tie him up and see how he is. Then we’ll talk. Give me a hand, Lovell!”
“And waste the time that might save our necks—and half a million dollars. I tell you, it ain’t right to throw away a chunk of coin like that!”
But he fell to, with his little, rapid hands, to make bare the wound of Silver.
The slug had torn right through his body. The mark where it entered, under the breast, was comparatively small. But there was a great hole in the back. Certainly it seemed that there was no way of keeping the life from flying out through such an aperture. Wayland turned sick as, by the dim moonlight, he saw the truth of things.
“You see?” snapped Lovell.
“We’ll just tie him up!” urged Wayland.
“Oh, well,” said Jimmy Lovell through his teeth.
But he helped, nevertheless. With dust they stopped the mouths of the wounds. Then, with tom-up shirts, they made a big, clumsy bandage.
What chance was there for Silver, who lay with closed eyes, his face like a stone? How much life was flickering in him like a dying fire? Now and then his mouth pinched in a little, but there was no other way in which he expressed the agony that must be wringing him.
Beside him crouched the great wolf, making strange sounds in the base of his throat. The smell of blood, even of his master’s blood, made the slaver of the brute start running, and increased the fire in his eyes. But the sound in his throat was like a queer mourning. Sometimes he showed his great fangs, as though he would sink his teeth in the hands that worked over his master and gave him pain, but he seemed to realize that this work might be, beyond his comprehension, in behalf of Jim Silver.
Wayland could see, in the back of his mind, a picture of the dead man stretched here, unknown to the world, with the wolf keeping guard over the corpse, and the stallion lingering, starving among the rocks, unwilling to drift away from the body of Jim Silver.