do yuh think you're doing, just standing around?"

"We ought to be hung for letting him come down here alone," Weary
repented. "It ain't safe for one man in this cursed country. Where's
he hurt, Cadwolloper?"

"How in hell do _I_ know?" Anxiety ever sharpened the tongue of Pink.
"If somebody'd bring some water--"

"Happy's gone. And there ain't a drop uh whisky in the crowd! Can't we
get him into the shade? This damned sun is enough to--"

"Look out how yuh lift him, man! You ain't wrassling a calf, remember!
You take his shoulder, Jack--_easy_, yuh damned, awkward--"

"Here comes Happy, with his hat full. Don't slosh it all on at once! A
little at a time's better. Get some on his head."

So with much incoherence and with everybody giving orders and each
acting independently, they bore him tenderly into the shade of a rock
and worked over him feverishly, their faces paler than his. When he
opened his eyes and stared at them dully, they could have shouted for
very relief. When he closed them again they bent over him solicitously
and dripped more water from the hat of Happy Jack. And not one of them
but remembered remorsefully the things they had said of him, not an
hour before; the things they had said even when he was lying there
alone and hurt--hurt unto death, for all they knew.

When he was roused enough to groan when they moved him, however
gently, they began to consider the problem of getting him to camp, and
they cursed the long, hot miles that lay between. They tried to
question him, but if he understood what they were saying he could not
reply except by moaning, which was not good to hear. All that they
could gather was that when they moved his body in a certain way the
pain of it was unbearable. Also, he would faint when his head was
lowered, or even lifted above the level. They must guard against that
if they meant to get him to camp alive.

"We'll have to carry him up this cussed hill, and then--If he could
ride at all, we might make it."

"The chances is he'll die on the road," croaked Happy Jack tactlessly,
and they scowled at him for voicing the fear they were trying to
ignore. They had been trying not to think that he might die on the
road, and they had been careful not to mention the possibility. As it
was, no one answered.

How they ever got him to the top of that heartbreaking slope, not one
of them ever knew. Twice he fainted outright. And Happy Jack,
carefully bearing his hat full of wat