man in the same moment that
he made a heroic effort to lay hold of the carbine which had
luckily--for us--fallen beyond the length of his arm.

"Yuh lay down there an' be good!" Piegan, out of the fullness of his
heart, emphasized his command with the toe of his boot. "Where's that
girl, yuh swine?"

"Go to hell!" Bevans snarled.

"Here," MacRae broke in hastily, "we've got to move pretty _pronto_,
and get across the river. That fire will be on us in five minutes. Sarge
and I will gather up their horses. You keep an eye on Bevans, Piegan;
he'll answer questions fast enough when I get at him."

While Mac dashed across the creek I captured Gregory's horse, which had
stopped when his rider fell; and as I laid hand on the reins I thought I
heard a shot off beyond the river. But I couldn't be certain. The whine
of the wind that comes with a fire, the crackle of the fire itself, the
manifold sounds that echoed between the canyon walls and the pungent,
suffocating smoke, all conspired against clear thinking or hearing. I
listened a moment, but heard no more. Then, with time at a premium, I
hastened to straighten out the tangle of pack-animals. Mac loomed up in
the general blur with Lessard's body on his horse, as I led the others
back to where Piegan stood guard over Bevans.

"Ain't this hell!" he coughed. "That fire's right on top of us. We got
t' make the river in a hurry."

It was another minute's work to lash Gregory's body on one of the
pack-horses, and release the sullen Bevans from the weight of his dead
mount. As an afterthought, I looked in the pockets on his saddle, and
the first thing I discovered was a wad of paper money big enough to
choke an ox, as Piegan would say. I hadn't the time to investigate
further, so I simply cut the _anqueros_ off his saddle and flung them
across the horn of my own--and even in that swirl of smoke and sparks I
glowed with a sense of gratification, for it seemed that at last I was
about to shake hands with the ten thousand dollars I had mourned as
lost. Then Piegan and I drove Bevans ahead of us and moved the spoils of
war to the river brink, while MacRae hurried to the cottonwood grove
after our own neglected mounts; they had given us too good service to be
abandoned to the holocaust.

MacRae soon joined us with the three horses; out into the stream, wading
till the water gurgled around our waists, we led the bunch. Then we
were compelled to take our hats and slosh water over p