"I 'm going to get a litter and get you up out o' this hell-hole of a
swamp," announced Blake. "I 'm going to have you carried up to the
hills. Then I 'm going back to Chalavia to get a doctor o' some kind.
Then I 'm going to put you on your feet again!"

Binhart slowly moved his head from side to side. Then the
heat-lightning smile played about the hollow face again.

"It was some chase, Jim, was n't it?" he said, without looking at his
old-time enemy.

Blake stared down at him with his haggard hound's eyes; there was no
answering smile on his heavy lips, now furzed with their grizzled
growth of hair. There seemed something ignominious in such an end,
something futile and self-frustrating. It was unjust. It left
everything so hideously incomplete. He revolted against it with a
sullen and senseless rage.

"By God, you 're not going to die!" declared the staring and
sinewy-necked man at the bedside. "I say you 're not going to die. I
'm going to get you out o' here alive!"

A sweat of weakness stood out on Binhart's white face.

"Where to?" he asked, as he had asked one before. And his eyes
remained closed as put the question.

"To the pen," was the answer which rose Blake's lips. But he did not
utter the words. Instead, he rose impatiently to his feet. But the
man on the bed must have sensed that unspoken response, for he opened
his eyes and stared long and mournfully at his heavy-bodied enemy.

"You 'll never get me there!" he said, in little more than a whisper.
"Never!"

XVI

Binhart was moved that night up into the hills. There he was installed
in a bungalow of an abandoned banana plantation and a doctor was
brought to his bedside. He was delirious by the time this doctor
arrived, and his ravings through the night were a source of vague worry
to his enemy. On the second day the sick man showed signs of
improvement.

For three weeks Blake watched over Binhart, saw to his wants, journeyed
to Chalavia for his food and medicines. When the fever was broken and
Binhart began to gain strength the detective no longer made the trip to
Chalavia in person. He preferred to remain with the sick man.

He watched that sick man carefully, jealously, hour by hour and day by
day. A peon servant was paid to keep up the vigil when Blake slept, as
sleep he must.

But the strain was beginning to tell on him. He walked heavily. The
asthmatic wheeze of his breathing became more audible. His ea