bove it--for his legging was off and torn
into strips which formed a bandage, and a splinter of rock was twisted
ingeniously in the wrappings for added tightness. From a crisscross of
gashes a sluggish, red stream trickled down to the ankle-bone, and from
there drip-dropped into a tiny, red pool in the barren, yellow soil.

"Catchum rattlesnake bite?" queried Good Indian inanely, as is the habit
of the onlooker when the scene shouts forth eloquently its explanation,
and questions are almost insultingly superfluous.

"Huh!" grunted Peppajee, disdaining further speech upon the subject, and
regarded sourly the red drip.

"Want me to suck it?" ventured Good Indian unenthusiastically, eying the
wound.

"Huh!" Peppajee removed the pipe, his eyes still upon his ankle. "Plenty
blood come, mebbyso." To make sure, however, he kneaded the swollen
flesh about the wound, thus accelerating slightly the red drip.

Then deliberately he took another turn with the rock, sending the
buckskin thongs deeper into the flesh, and held the burning pipe against
the skin above the wound until Good Indian sickened and turned away his
head. When he looked again, Peppajee was sucking hard at the pipe, and
gazing impersonally at the place. He bent again, and hid the glow of his
pipe against his ankle. His thin lips tightened while he held it there,
but the lean, brown fingers were firm as splinters of the rock behind
him. When the fire cooled, he fanned it to life again with his breath,
and when it winked redly at him he laid it grimly against his flesh.

So, while Good Indian stood and looked on with lips as tightly drawn
as the other's, he seared a circle around the wound--a circle which bit
deep and drew apart the gashes like lips opened for protest. He regarded
critically his handiwork, muttered a "Bueno" under his breath, knocked
the ashes from his pipe, and returned it to some mysterious hiding-place
beneath his blanket. Then he picked up his moccasin.

"Them damn' snake, him no speakum," he observed disgustedly. "Heap fool
me; him biteum"--he made a stabbing gesture with thumb and finger in
the air by way of illustration--"then him go quick." He began gingerly
trying to force the moccasin upon his foot, his mouth drawn down with
the look of one who considers that he has been hardly used.

"How you get home?" Good Indian's thoughts swung round to practical
things. "You got horse?"

Peppajee shook his head, reached for his knife, and sl