Then suddenly he stopped and stood silhouetted there, sweat-shiny and tattered, blood-stained and panting, and instead of pitching Bas Rowlett outward he laid him down again on the shelf of rock.
How much later he did not know, though he knew that it was twilight now, Bas Rowlett seemed to come out of a heavy and disturbed sleep in which there had been no rest, and he found himself lying with his feet hanging over the precipice edge, and with Thornton looking intently down upon him. In Thornton's hand was the recovered pistol—so there must have been time enough for that.
But his perplexed brain reeled to the realization that he still lay up here instead of among the rocks upon which he should have been broken two hundred feet below. Presumably the victor had waited for returning consciousness in the victim to consummate that atrocity.
But Thornton's unaccountable whims had flown at another tangent.
"Git up, Bas," he commanded, briefly, "yore life b'longs ter me. I won hit—an' ye're goin' ter die—but my fingers don't ache no more fer a holt on yore throat—they're satisfied."
"What air—ye goin' ter do, now?" Rowlett found words hard to form; and the victor responded promptly, "I've done concluded ter take ye down thar, afore ye dies, an' make ye crave Dorothy's pardon on yore bended knees. Ye owes hit ter her."
Slowly Rowlett dragged himself to a sitting posture. His incredulous senses wanted to sing out in exultation, but he forced himself to demur with surly obduracy.
"Hain't hit enough ter kill me without humiliatin' me, too?"
"No, hit hain't enough fer me an' hit's too tardy fer you ter make no terms now."
Bas Rowlett exaggerated his dizzy weakness. There was every reason for taking time. This mad idea that had seized upon the other was a miracle of deliverance for him. If only he could kill time until night had come and the moon had risen, it would prove not only a respite but a full pardon—capped with a reserved climax of triumph.