you-all pull through if we tote you out of here?" asked Nick.

Bill Frank shook his head. His breath was beginning to fail and his
voice sank to a whisper with each sentence.

"No; I'm done for. You can't do nothin' for me." Then he turned to
Tom. "Pardner, I did you a bad trick when I saw you before, though I
had to do it. And when I told you good-bye I said I hoped that if I
ever saw you again I could treat you whiter than I did that time.
Well, I've got the chance now. That tomato can and that gunny sack are
over there behind your pardner, and you and him can have 'em. The
other tomato can and the whisky flask and the coffee pot and the pail
and the Dutch oven are under some big rocks behind a boulder south
from the spring, if them two thieves didn't carry 'em away, and you
and your pardner can have it all. The trail takes you to the spring."

Tom was staring at him in wide-eyed amazement, trying to recall his
face. Nick exclaimed hurriedly:

"Hold on, pard! Ain't you-all got some folks somewhere who ought to
have this? Tell us where they are and we'll see that they get it."

The man shook his head. His breath was labored, and he spoke with
difficulty as he whispered: "There ain't anybody who'd care whether
I'm dead or alive, except to get that gold, and I'd rather you'd have
it. You're white, anyway, and you've treated me white, both of you,
and I've always been sorry I had to play Thomson Tuttle here that mean
trick, because he was a gentleman about it, and sand clean through."

Tom was still staring at him. "Stranger," he said, "you've got the
advantage of me. I can't remember that I've ever set eyes on you
before."

The death glaze was coming in the man's eyes and his failing whisper
struggled to get past his stiffening lips.

"I held you up, and held a gun on you-all one night, last spring, up
near the White Sands."

"Oh, that time!" Tom exclaimed. "That was all right. I reckoned
you-all had good reason for it."

Bill Frank nodded. "Yes," he whispered, "we had to--in the wagon--"
Some of his words were unintelligible, but a sudden flash of
inspiration leaped through Nick's mind.

"Did you have Will Whittaker's body? Who killed him? Tom, the whisky,
quick! We must keep him alive till he can tell!"

The man's lips were moving and Nick put his ear close to them and
thought he caught the word "not," but he was not sure. Bill Frank's
head moved from side to side, but whether he meant to shake it, or
w