“Because I’m not going to let you die,” was Blake’s answer.
“You can’t help it, Jim! The jig’s up!”
“I’m going to get a litter and get you up out o’ this hell-hole of a swamp,” announced Blake. “I’m going to have you carried up to the hills. Then I’m going back to Chalavia to get a doctor o’ some kind. Then I’m going to put you on your feet again!”
Binhart slowly moved his head from side to side. Then the heat-lightning smile played about the hollow face again.
“It was some chase, Jim, wasn’t it?” he said, without looking at his old-time enemy.
Blake stared down at him with his haggard hound’s eyes; there was no answering smile on his heavy lips, now furzed with their grizzled growth of hair. There seemed something ignominious in such an end, something futile and self-frustrating. It was unjust. It left everything so hideously incomplete. He revolted against it with a sullen and senseless rage.
“By God, you’re not going to die!” declared the staring and sinewy-necked man at the bedside. “I say you’re not going to die. I’m going to get you out o’ here alive!”
A sweat of weakness stood out on Binhart’s white face.
“Where to?” he asked, as he had asked once before. And his eyes remained closed as he put the question.
“To the pen,” was the answer which rose to Blake’s lips. But he did not utter the words. Instead, he rose impatiently to his feet. But the man on the bed must have sensed that unspoken response, for he opened his eyes and stared long and mournfully at his heavy-bodied enemy.