“There are no buts about it! Either you get up and make one more struggle, or I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you are not in condition to make a struggle when I leave you. This is business, and it’s straight from the shoulder!”
Diamond remonstrated weakly, but Frank seemed in sober earnest.
“I believe it would do you good,” he declared. “It would beat a little sense into you. It’s what you want, anyway.”
A sense of shame came over Jack.
“If you’ve got enough energy to give me a licking, I ought to have enough to make another try for life,” he huskily said.
“Of course you have.”
“Well, I’ll do it. It isn’t because I fear the licking, for that wouldn’t make any difference now, but I can make another try for it, if you can.”
Frank dragged the other boy to his feet, and then picked up their fallen wheels. Jack was so weak that he could scarcely stand, seeming to have been quite exhausted by his last furious struggle with the boy who had raced across the desert sands to save his life. Twice Frank caught him and kept him from falling.
“What’s the use?” Diamond hoarsely whispered. “I tell you I can’t keep in the saddle!”
“And I tell you that you must! There are the other fellows, coming this way. I will signal them to ride toward the mountains, and we will join them.”