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 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.
