Aleck groaned and rolled his head. "I don't know," he said.
Jim Denny was the new leader of the brigand party. "Hell's bells!" said he, impatiently now. "We can't be fooling around—this don't look good to me. Noon to-morrow, anyways, the Doctor ought to be here. As for us, we got to beat it now."
The wolf pack knew no mercy nor unselfishness. Aleck got no more attention from them. There were two cars beside the one which had brought Aleck and Mary Warren up the day before. This last one they left, seeing that the tire was in bad condition. Not one of them turned to say good-by to Aleck as he lay in the tent where he had been dragged.
"Got it right on top the hip bone," said one man. "She busted him plenty with that soft-nose."
"And served him right," said Jim Denny, the new leader, grumbling. "Aleck has never been looking for the worst of it, any way of the game. If he had left that woman down below where she belonged, we wouldn't be in this fix. I tell you them ranchers'll be out in a pack after us, and the only thing we can do is to pull our freight good and plenty right now."
The whir of the engine drowned conversation. An instant later the two carloads of banditti were passing down around curve after curve of the sandy road. Mary Warren, still dazed, and dull where she lay, heard them go by. Yonder then, lay the trail—but could she know which way? If she turned her head she would lose the direction. She kept her eyes fixed upon the last point of the compass from which she had heard the car distinctly, and taking the muzzle of the revolver in her hand, endeavored to scratch a mark in the sand to give her the direction later by the sense of touch. She laid the pistol itself at the upper end of the little furrow, pointing toward the road which she had left. Sinking down, she resigned herself to what she felt must soon be the end.
The chill of the mountain night was coming on. The whispering in the pines grew less. Vaguely she sensed that the sun was low, that soon twilight would come. She had no means of making a fire, had no covering, no food. Simply a lost unit of one of the many species inhabiting the earth, surviving each as it may, she cowered alone and helpless in the wilderness.
The hush of the evening came. The pines were silent. There was only one little faint sound above her—in some tree, she thought. It was made by a worm boring under the bark, seeking place for the larvae which presently it would leave, in order that its species might endure. A small sound, of no great carrying power.