Merry’s fingers shut off the man’s wind, and it seemed that the bones cracked beneath that pressure. Still the desperado fought to the last, though he gradually grew weaker and weaker.
Merry choked the man into insensibility. Having done this, he began to search his clothes for the message. In course of time he found it, within an inner pocket. Frank opened it and looked at it by the aid of the moonlight.
“Thank Heaven!” he said. “I have it again! This is the message my father wrote and sent to me.”
He had been so absorbed that he was quite unaware of anything else that was taking place. Now, having thrust the message into his pocket, he rose and looked around.
To his amazement, the canoe, containing the old Indian and the boy, was gliding swiftly away over the lake, while on the shore lay the bleeding body of Gunnison Bill. In the knife duel the ruffian had met more than his match in Old Joe, who had ended the career of the desperado. Gunnison Bill’s life of evil-doing was over.
Frank called to the Indian and the boy, urging them to return, saying he was a friend; but they paid not the least heed, and the canoe kept on till it melted into the shadow along a distant shore.
Anton Mescal lay quite still on the shore, and Frank feared he had killed the fellow. On kneeling by the side of the scoundrel and feeling for his heart-beats, Merry found that life remained in Mescal’s body.
“He’ll recover,” Merry decided. “I think I’ll truss him up.”
So he lifted Mescal and carried him up the bank to a large tree. The unconscious villain was placed in a sitting position on the ground, with his back against the tree, after which Merry stripped up the man’s coat and bound him in that position.
Having disposed of Mescal thus, Frank hastened back toward the cabin home of Delores. On the way he met Hodge.