The Argosy, November 1908 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

582 floor, and, rushing out, they leaped on their horses and were off like the wind. Aghast, half stupefied, I stood alone in my battered house. And then, for the first time, I discovered that I had been wounded. It was not a serious wound. Scarcely worth mentioning. I stooped over Sam, and found that he was still breathing. I picked him up and carried him to his own bed. There I examined him, and found that a bullet had found its way in between two ribs on the right side and out again. I bathed his wounds, and with a strip torn from a clean sheet, which I was still civilized enough to use, I bandaged him up. Then I poured some brandy down his throat. He opened his eyes. ‘“Where’s Namona?” he asked. “The Yaquis took her.” “Curse them! Curse them!” he yelled. “Get me up! I will go after them.” ‘Keep still,” I commanded. ‘“ You will start those wounds bleeding again, and then it won’t make any difference to you where Namona is.” “Curse those Yaquis! women!” ““Well, keep quiet. Give me a chance to get my wits together. We'll find Na- mona. Don’t fret about her. They'll probably take her to Bonilla’s ranch. No harm will come to her before we can get there.” He grumbled something in his weak- ness, and I feared that his violence would do him harm. “Take a drink of this,” I said, hand- ing him a glass of brandy. He had wonderful strength, and after the first fit of unconsciousness his wounds did not seem to render him helpless. He took the glass in his own hand and drained it. “Now,” I went on, “keep your senses. I’ve got a lot of work to do here, owing to your confounded hot- headedness. See if you can keep quiet while I take care of those we shot.” “Dogs! All dogs of Yaquis,’”’ he muttered. There was the one I had hit lying dead on the floor of my general living- room. I dragged his body outside. The They abuse THE ARGOSY. one Sam had shot first lay where he fell. And Hernandez lay some distance away. In their triumphant abduction of Na- mona, the Yaquis had gone off, leaving their employer on the ground. Perhaps they thought he was dead, but I found him breathing. As may be imagined, I felt no great love for the fellow, but I reflected that it had not been Hernandez who began the fighting. He had been ugly enough, and perhaps would have begun shooting anyway, and if he had, I would have been his target. But it was not the time for supposing that something might have happened. I had to deal with what had happened. I picked Hernandez up, carried him into the house, and placed him on my own bed. I did for him the same as I had for Sam. He was less seriously wounded, but he did not have the strength Sam had. I had a more difficult job getting him back to consciousness. ““You—you take care of me?” he murmured wonderingly, as he woke up and realized what I was doing. ‘Oh, yes,” I said. “I am an Amer- ican. We don’t kill people while they are unconscious.” He turned his face away as though it | was a bitter pill to be under this obliga- tion to one who had defied and thus far outwitted him in his search for the girl. My fig plantation was far away from any other. The sounds of the fighting could not be heard by any one unless® it chanced that somebody was passing. I went down to the hedge gateway and looked in both directions. I saw no one. Of course I knew that I must make a report of the affair to the authorities, and thought of Jim Saxe first. Saxe was the sheriff of San Diego County, and a friend of mine. He was a rugged, square-jawed, honest fellow, who knew nothing but his duty and the law. And if his best friend had broken the law, that friend would obtain no shelter or assistance from Jim Saxe. His theory was that no friend of his would break the law. So, when a friend of his did so, the friendship ceased and Saxe became only the sheriff with a duty to perform. comicbooks.com -