But he knew well that they were a seven who had learned wisdom from the fate of their comrades. From Nogales, Leddy must have heard of the loss of two horses. At best, but one of the beleaguered three had any means of escape. Leddy could well afford to curb his impatience as he camped comfortably by the water-hole, while his own horses grazed.

The sun was still above the western ridge in the effulgence of its adieu for the day. Jack was on his knee, with the broad, level glare full on him, looking at Prather, who was in the shadow; and his reflections were mixed with that pity which one feels toward another who is lame or blind or suffers for the want of any sense or faculty that is born to the average human being. For a man of true courage rarely sees a coward as anything but a man ailing; he is grateful for nature's kindness to himself. And the spark of John Wingfield, Knight, skipping generations before it settled on a descendant, had not chosen John Prather for its favor. The ancestor was all Jack's.

Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as he watched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entire detachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly in the silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presence of any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in the luminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supreme satisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun.

"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!"

"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confident ring of Jack's tone.

"There is one horse left," said Jack. "He is in better condition than Leddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and by morning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on the range trail. Then you will be quite safe."

"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous.

"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is that a bargain?" Jack asked.

"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely--its millions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed.

"King Richard III, you remember," Jack declared, with a trace of his old humor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he would give his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost both his kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he might have saved his life and perhaps--who knows?--have won another kingdom."

"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he added bitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in the prehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another.

"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked.

"I--I--"

"Yes!" interposed Jack firmly.

"Yes!" Prather admitted.

"And you have pencil and paper to make some sort of transfer that will be the first legal step in undoing what you have done?"

"Yes."

While Prather was occupied with this, Jack found pencil and paper on his own account and by the light of the sun's last rays and in the happiness of one who has brought a story to a good end, he wrote to his father:

"John Prather will tell you how he and I met out on the desert before you came and of the long talk we had.

"You wanted a son who would go on building on the great foundation you had laid. You have one. He said that you wanted to give him the store.

The reason why you might not give it to him no longer exists. The mole is gone. Of course there will be a scar where the mole was. I, too, shall have to carry a scar. But the means is in your power to go far toward erasing his, for his mother, Mrs. Prather, is still living.

"So everything is clear. Everything is coming out right. John Prather and I change places, as nature intended that we should. You need have no apprehensions on my account. Though I had not a cent in the world I could make my living out here--a very sweet thought, this, to me, with its promise of something real and practical and worth while, at which I can make good. I know that you are going to keep the bargain that Prather and I have made; and think of me as over the pa.s.s and very happy as I write this, in the confidence that at last all accounts have been balanced and we can both turn to a fresh page in the ledger. JACK."

When Jack, after he had received the transfer, gave the letter to Prather to read, Prather was transfixed with incredulity.

"You mean this?" he gasped blankly, as his surprise became articulate.

"Yes. You have quite the better of King Richard--you gain both the kingdom and the horse."

"The store, yes, the store--mine! Mine--the store!" said Prather, in a slow, pa.s.sionate monotone, his fingers trembling with the very triumph of possession as he thrust the letter into his pocket. "The store, yes, the store!" he repeated, amazement mixed with exultation. "But--" his keen, practical mind was recovering its balance; he was on guard again. Between him and the realization of his inheritance lay the shadow of the fear of the miles in the night. "But--there is no trick?" he hazarded in suspicion.

"No!"

Jack spoke in such a way that it removed the last doubt for Prather, who kneaded his palms together in a kind of frenzy, oblivious of all except the moneyed prospect of the kingdom craved that had become a kingdom won.

"How long before I start?" he asked.

"As soon as the first darkness settles and before the moon rises."

"I shall need some food," Prather went on ingratiatingly. "And they say wounds bring on fever. Have you any water to drink on the way?"

"We will fix you up the best we can. I will divide what water remains between you and P.D. He shall have his share now and you can drink yours later."

The sun had set. The afterglow was fading, and in a few minutes, when the light was quite out of the heavens, Jack announced that it was time for Prather to start.

"How shall I know the direction?" Prather asked.

"Trust P.D. He will find it," said Jack. He held the stirrup for Prather to mount with the relief of freeing himself at last from the clinging touch of the phantoms. "You are perfectly safe. In two days you will be mounting the steps of a Pullman on your way to New York."

"And you? What--what are you going to do?" Prather inquired hectically, with a momentary qualm of shame.

"Why, if Firio and I are to have water to make coffee for breakfast we must take the water-hole!" Jack answered, as if this were a thing of minor importance beside seeing Prather safely on his way. "Be sure not to overwater P.D. after the night's ride, and don't overdo him on the final stretch, and turn him over to Galway when you arrive. Home, P.D.! Home!"

he concluded, striking that good soldier with the flat of his hand on the b.u.t.tocks. And P.D. trotted away into the night.

Jack listened to the hoof-beats on the soft earth dying away and then crept up beside Firio on the bank and gazed into the black wall in the direction of the cotton-woods. A slight glow in the basin, which must be Leddy's camp-fire, was the only sign of life in the neighborhood. The silence was profound. He had not spoken a word to Firio. With one problem forever solved, he was absorbed in another.

"Leddy drinks, eats, waits!" whispered Firio. "If we try to go they hunt us down!"

"Yes," said Jack.

"And we not go, eh? We stay? We fight?"

"For water, Firio, yes! Two against seven!"

"_Si_!" Firio had no illusions about the situation. "_Si_!" he repeated stoically.

"And, Firio--" Jack's hand slipped with a quick, gripping caress onto Firio's shoulder. An inspiration had come to the mind of action, just as a line comes to a poet in a flash; as one must have come to the ancestor many times after he had gone into a tight place trusting to his wits and his blade to bring him out. "And, Firio, we are going to change our base, as the army men say--and change it before the moon rises. Jag Ear, we shall have to leave you behind," he added, when they had dropped back to the burro's side. "Just make yourself comfortable. Leddy surely wouldn't think of killing so valuable a member of the non-combatant cla.s.s. We will come for you, by and by. It will be all right!"

He gave the sliver of ear an affectionate corkscrew twist before he and Firio, taking all their ammunition, crawled along the bottom of the _arroyo_ and up the ridge where they settled down comfortably behind a ledge commanding the water-hole at easy range.

"It's lucky we learned to shoot in the moonlight!" Jack whispered.

"_Si"!_ Firio answered, in perfect understanding.

x.x.xVII

THE END OF THE WEAVING