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snorted in terror.
Gale could bear no more. He took a quick shot at the rider. He missed the
moving figure, but hit the horse. There was a bound, a horrid scream, a
mighty plunge, then the horse went down, giving the Mexican a stunning fall.
Both beast and man lay still.
Gale rushed from his cover to intercept the other raiders before they could
reach the house and their weapons. One fellow yelled and ran wildly in the
opposite direction; the other stood stricken in his tracks. Gale ran in close
and picked up the gun that had dropped from the raider leader's hand. This
fellow had begun to stir, to come out of his stunned condition. Then the
frightened horses burst the corral bars, and in a thundering, dust-mantled
stream fled up the arroyo.
The fallen raider sat up, mumbling to his saints in one breath, cursing in his
next. The other Mexican kept his stand, intimidated by the threatening rifle.
"Go, Greasers! Run!" yelled Gale. Then he yelled it in Spanish.
At the point of his rifle he drove the two raiders out of the camp.
His next move was to run into the house and fetch out the carbines.
With a heavy stone he dismantled each weapon. That done, he set out on a run
for his horse. He took the shortest cut down the arroyo, with no concern as
to whether or not he would encounter the raiders.
Probably such a meeting would be all the worse for them, and they knew it.
Blanco Sol heard him coming and whistled a welcome, and when Gale ran up the
horse was snorting war. Mounting, Gale rode rapidly back to the scene of the
action, and his first thought, when he arrived at the well, was to give Sol a
drink and to fill his canteens.
Then Gale led his horse up out of the waterhole, and decided before remounting
to have a look at the Indians. The Papago had been shot through the heart,
but the Yaqui was still alive.
Moreover, he was conscious and staring up at Gale with great, strange, somber
eyes, black as volcanic slag.
"Gringo good--no kill," he said, in husky whisper.
His speech was not affirmative so much as questioning.
"Yaqui, you're done for," said Gale, and his words were positive.
He was simply speaking aloud his mind.
"Yaqui--no hurt--much," replied the Indian, and then he spoke a strange
word--repeated it again and again.
An instinct of Gale's, or perhaps some suggestion in the husky, thick whisper
or dark face, told Gale to reach for his canteen.
He lifted the Indian and gave him a drink, and if ever in all his life he saw
gratitude in human eyes he saw it then. Then he examined the injured Yaqui,
not forgetting for an instant to send wary, fugitive glances on all sides.
Gale was not surprised. The
Indian had three wounds--a bullet hole in his shoulder, a crushed arm, and a
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badly lacerated leg. What had been the matter with him before being set upon
by the raider Gale could not be certain.
The ranger thought rapidly. This Yaqui would live unless left there to die or
be murdered by the Mexicans when they found courage to sneak back to the well.
It never occurred to Gale to abandon the poor fellow. That was where his old
training, the higher order of human feeling, made impossible the following of
any elemental instinct of self-preservation. All the same, Gale knew he
multiplied his perils a hundredfold by burdening himself with a crippled
Indian.
Swiftly he set to work, and with rifle ever under his hand, and shifting
glance spared from his task, he bound up the Yaqui's wounds. At the same time
he kept keen watch.
The Indians' burros and the horses of the raiders were all out of sight. Time
was too valuable for Gale to use any in what might be a vain search.
Therefore, he lifted the Yaqui upon Sol's broad shoulders and climbed into the
saddle. At a word Sol dropped his head and started eastward up the trail,
walking swiftly, without resentment for his double burden.
Far ahead, between two huge mesas where the trail mounted over a pass, a long
line of dust clouds marked the position of the horses that had escaped from
the corral. Those that had been stolen would travel straight and true for
home, and perhaps would lead the others with them. The raiders were left on
the desert without guns or mounts.
Blanco Sol walked or jog-trotted six miles to the hour. At that gait fifty
miles would not have wet or turned a hair of his dazzling white coat. Gale,
bearing in mind the ever-present possibility of encountering more raiders and
of being pursued, saved the strength of the horse. Once out of sight of
Papago Well, Gale dismounted and walked beside the horse, steadying with one
firm hand the helpless, dangling Yaqui.
The sun cleared the eastern ramparts, and the coolness of morning fled as if
before a magic foe. The whole desert changed. The grays wore bright; the
mesquites glistened; the cactus took the silver hue of frost, and the rocks
gleamed gold and red. Then, as the heat increased, a wind rushed up out of
the valley behind Gale, and the hotter the sun blazed down the swifter rushed
the wind.
The wonderful transparent haze of distance lost its bluish hue for one with
tinge of yellow. Flying sand made the peaks dimly outlined.
Gale kept pace with his horse. He bore the twinge of pain that darted through
his injured hip at every stride. His eye roved over the wide, smoky prospect
seeking the landmarks he knew.
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