"It isn't that," said Felipe, feeling his dignity assailed; "my shoulder is very sore; I have a bullet wound in it."
"The mischief, you have," said Stephens. "I suppose you got that from the cacique. I guess it must have hurt you some when I was mauling you just now." His voice softened a bit. "Of course I couldn't know about that"; he was actually apologising already to his would-be murderer.
"Here, bring it to the light of the fire and let me see it." Felipe squatted down with his right shoulder towards the blaze. "H'm, yes, an ugly place, rather," examining it carefully, "but it's been well done up"; he smelt it, "you've got that carbolic on it; good stuff for a gunshot wound, in my opinion. Say, where d'you get any round here?"
"Mr. Backus," answered the boy.
"Oh, from him. Seems to me he's been having a good deal to say to you lately. Who dressed this for you?" He replaced the bandage.
"Mr. Backus."
"Well, he understands gunshot wounds pretty well, but you take my advice and don't have any more to do with him for the present. He aint good company for young gentlemen with no more brains than you--Hullo! what's that? Didn't you hear something out yonder?"
A faint cry appeared to come from a distance.
"It sounds like a man," said Felipe.
The cry was repeated; it seemed like the word "Help!"
"Come on," cried Stephens, snatching his Winchester from the case and running into the darkness in the direction from which the sound seemed to come. Felipe followed him.
"Help!" came again more distinctly.
In another minute they were on the spot where the body of a man lay writhing on the ground face downwards. Stephens stooped and raised him, and beheld his enemy, Backus.
He let him drop on the ground again as if he had unexpectedly picked up a snake, and sprang back grasping his rifle at the ready. Could this be some infernal trap? Had Felipe been deceiving him?
"Did you lie to me?" There was a dangerous ring in his voice. "I asked you if you were alone, and you said you were, and here's the man who's your confederate, by your own confession."
"Before God, I didn't know he was here," cried the boy very earnestly.
"What's the matter with him? He's dying."
"He deserves to die," said the prospector, looking down at him.
"Whiskey," moaned Backus brokenly; "I'm snake-bit."
"Snake-bit, are you?" said the prospector, still suspicious. "Well, if you are that's rather rough on you. Where are you struck?"
"In the face," said the wretched man. "For God's sake help me; this pain's maddening. I'm going to die."
"Lift his head up, Felipe," said Stephens, "and let me see the place.
Great Scot! I should say you were snake-bit, and powerful bad, too," he added, as the young Indian lifted the head of the fallen man and turned it so as to show the face. It was a ghastly sight! The whole of the left cheek and side of the head were swollen out of all recognition, and the puffed and strained skin was so discoloured that it looked like a mass of livid bruises.
His first suspicion had been that the cunning storekeeper had set Felipe on him, and then, finding that the Indian had failed in his murderous attack, had adopted the heartless but too common ruse of shamming sick, in order to get his antagonist at a disadvantage. Stephens had sprung backward, and was standing now with his Winchester, ready at any moment to pump lead into his would-be murderers; but the awful condition of his enemy was proof sufficient that there was no sham about this case.
Holding his rifle in one hand, he advanced, and with the other aided Felipe to raise the fallen man to a sitting posture.
"When did it happen?" he asked.
"Just now."
The stricken man's breathing was painfully laboured, and he spoke with extreme difficulty, so that it was hard to understand him.
"Have you any whiskey?" Stephens inquired.
"No."
"Have you done anything for it?"
"No."
"There's nothing you could have done that I know of," said Stephens; "I was thinking whether I could try to lance it for you, but I'm afraid of cutting an artery. Of course, Felipe, it isn't possible that you could have any whiskey?"
"No, indeed, Sooshiuamo," said the boy; "how could I?"
"No, no, of course you couldn't," said the prospector; "and I haven't any neither. If we had a quart of whiskey here we might be able to save him. The only thing we can do is to keep him moving. Look here, Felipe, you lift him under the right shoulder and I'll lift him under the left; we must walk him around. Now then, up!" Between them they raised the unhappy man to his feet.
"Come on," cried Stephens, "hold him up. Steady now."
They walked forward as steadily as they could in the direction of the cave-dwelling, Backus staggering along between them. His legs went through the motions of walking almost mechanically, but his weight rested entirely on his two supporters, and he was a heavy man to carry.
"Stick to it, Felipe," said Stephens, "it's the only chance for him.
Keep him going." They reached the cave. "Set him down here a minute before the fire," said Stephens, putting aside his rifle, and with both hands lowering the patient to the ground, after spreading his blanket for him to lie on. Backus was in a state of appalling collapse; the swelling increased so rapidly that it seemed as if his head must burst; the inflamed skin was horribly mottled with red and green and yellow, and a cold sweat broke out on him. Stephens knelt beside him and felt his pulse; it was rapid, fluttering, and feeble.
Felipe looked on, awestruck and speechless. That the prospector should try to preserve the life of his enemy did not appeal to him at all; it seemed to him only one more of the unaccountable things these Americans did. But the frightful state of the storekeeper, and the agonising pains he was suffering were the work of the dread reptile he had been taught to reverence from his earliest days. The gods were angry with Backus, and this was their doing.
Stephens felt that the stricken man's hands were growing deadly cold. He sprang up. "Come on, Felipe!" he exclaimed, rising quickly again to his feet. "He's at the last gasp, I think. We must try to walk him up and down again. It's the one thing we can do."
They raised him to his feet once more, Stephens putting his right arm round his waist, and steadying him with the other, and, Felipe aiding, they walked him to and fro on the meadow, trying to counteract the fatal lethargy produced by the bite.
"He must have got an awful dose of poison into him," said Stephens, as they struggled along with their now nearly unconscious burden. "I guess it must have been a snake that had been lying up for the winter, and had only just come out now the warm weather's beginning. They're worst of all then; their poison-bag has a full charge in it."
But Felipe made no answer; he was not affected by the scientific question as to how many drops of venom there might be in a serpent's poison-gland. For him the question was, "Had the god struck to kill? or would he be content to punish and pardon?" But as he looked at the lolling head and dragging limbs of the victim he felt that the god had struck to kill.
At this moment the moon sank beneath the horizon.
"I guess he's come to the jumping-off place," said Stephens, as Backus sank into absolute unconsciousness. "Let's carry him right back to the fire."
Once more they laid him down beside that prehistoric hearth, and the ruddy glow lit up the horrid spectacle of his distorted face. They tried to warm him and keep the life in him a little longer; but it was in vain. The laboured breath came slower and slower; the feeble pulse waxed fainter and fainter; the chill hand of death was there, and nought that they could do was of any avail; and after a little while Stephens was aware that the thing that lay in front of the fire was but a disfigured corpse.
Between them, he and Felipe raised it, and laid it at one side of the dwelling, and covered it from sight with the blanket. When they returned to the fire, they stood there side by side gazing at the embers in a long silence. They stood as it were in the presence of death, and neither the white man nor the red had any mind to break the solemnity of the scene.
Suddenly there came a low, rustling, slithering sound from the stones in the corner behind them, as a large snake glided out across the floor, and swiftly vanished into the darkness without.
Stephens gave an involuntary shudder. "That brute must have been in the corner there all the time I was here," he said.
"Yes, Sooshiuamo," answered Felipe in an awestruck voice, "he was there, but he did not touch you. Now he has gone to tell his brother who struck your enemy that he is dead. The snakes must be your friends; they do not hurt you; they only kill your enemies for you"; and as if impelled to penitence by what he regarded as a supernatural warning, he turned to the prospector and poured out in a flood a full confession of all he had heard and seen and suspected of Backus's schemes, and of his dealings with the Navajos.
Stephens listened aghast. Mahletonkwa certainly had told him that his message to the governor had been stopped, but he had been loath to believe that a white man could play such a treacherous game, and side with savages against his own countryman. It was natural for the American to prefer to think that the Navajo had lied; but, if Felipe spoke true, the wretched man who lay dead before them had really and actually sold him into the hands of the Navajos. Then arose the question--what had been his object? There might be more dangers around, more plots that Felipe knew nothing of? "I never liked him, it's true, but why should he play such a mean trick merely for that? If he really did destroy my letters asking for the soldiers, he must have done it that very hour that I gave them to him. It wasn't till the next day that I knocked him into the ditch, so he couldn't have done it out of revenge for that blow I gave him. I wonder, now, if he could have kept a grudge against me for that old wound at Apache Canon? Some folks find it mighty hard to forgive."