they hustled me onward I wiped my swollen lips; the back of my hand
seemed to be covered with thin blood.

"Where he struck me, once," I wheezed.

"Yes, mebbe so. But come along, come along. We'll tend to you."

The world had grown curiously darkened, so that we moved as through an
obscuring veil; and I dumbly wondered whether this was night (had it been
morning or evening when I started for the pond?) or whether I was dying
myself. I peered and again made out the sober, stern faces hedging me, but
they gave me no answer to my mutely anxious query. Across a great distance
we stumbled by the wagons (the same wagons of a time agone), and halted at
a fire.

"Set down. Fetch a blanket, somebody. Whar's the water? Set down till we
look you over."

I let them sit me down.

"Wash your mouth out."

That was done, pinkish; and a second time, clearer.

"You're all right." Jenks apparently was ministering to me. "Swaller
this."

The odor of whiskey fumed into my nostrils. I obediently swallowed, and
gasped and choked. Jenks wiped my face with a sopping cloth. Hands were
rummaging at my left arm; a bandage being wound about.

"Nothin' much," was the report. "Creased him, is all. Lucky he dodged. It
was comin' straight for his heart."

"He's all right," Jenks again asserted.

Under the bidding of the liquor the faintness from the exertion and
reaction was leaving me. The slight hemorrhage from the strain to my weak
lungs had ceased. I would live, I would live. But he--Daniel?

"Did I kill him?" I besought. "Not that! I didn't aim--I don't know how I
shot--but I had to. Didn't I?"

"You did. He'll not bother you ag'in. She's yourn."

That hurt.

"But it wasn't about her, it wasn't over Mrs. Montoyo. He bullied
me--dared me. We were man to man, boys. He made me fight him."

"Yes, shore," they agreed--and they were not believing. They still linked
me with a woman, whereas she had figured only as a transient occasion.

Then she herself, My Lady, appeared, running in breathless and appealing.

"Is Mr. Beeson hurt? Badly? Where is he? Let me help."

She knelt beside me, her hand grasped mine, she gazed wide-eyed and
imploring.

"No, he's all right, ma'am."

"I'm all right, I assure you," I mumbled thickly, and helpless as a babe
to the clinging of her cold fingers.

"How's the other man?" they abruptly asked.

"I don't know. He was carried away. But I think he's dead. I hope so--oh,
I hope so. The coward, th