She touched his head gently. There was no trace of blood. He must have been stunned and tied, his captors relying upon the remoteness and abandoned appearance of the shack to cover their work. Why had they done it, Jerry wondered. Beechy had said that he had contracted to work on the railroad. She remembered his answer to Steve's protest, "You know, there is honor among thieves." Had he been linked up with Ranlett? But Ranlett had nothing to do with the railroad.
If she could only get him up. When she tried to lift him the clumsy cartridge belt with the dangling holster kept getting in her way. With an impatient exclamation she unfastened it and dropped it to the floor. Then she slid the man's feet from the bunk, put her arms under him and lifted him. His head rolled to her shoulder. How hot it was. If only she had water! Her eyes roved about the cabin. No hope there. Through the doorway, not twenty yards away, she could see the pool with the carcass of the calf lying beyond it. With the possibility of lurking enemies, had she the courage to go out to that?
Beechy stirred and lifted heavy lids. The eyes beneath them were glazed with pain. He looked about the room, then up at the face bending over him. His gaze lingered a moment dreamily, then incredulously, then it seemed as though his brain made a superhuman effort to break the spell which bound it.
"Mrs. Lieut.!" he tried to get to his feet but his head rolled weakly back to the girl's shoulder. "Go! Go!" he whispered hoarsely. He made another effort to sit up. He gripped the edge of the bunk till the flesh under his finger nails showed white. "If I could get water to—to cool this—this devilish fire in my head—go—Ranlett——" his clearing gaze fastened on the long scratch on her cheek—"For the love of—did they get you too?"
Jerry gently forced him back.
"No—no, I fell. Lie still, Beechy, while I go for water. Every moment that you keep quiet counts. Your head is not cut, there is nothing the matter that I can discover except that you were stunned. Don't move while I am gone. When I come back we will get away from here—we—we must. Remember that my safety depends upon you now and keep perfectly still until I come back."
It was quite the reverse, his safety depended upon her, Jerry thought, but she knew his type. Her need of his help would do more than anything else to clear his mind. She picked up the tin can she had used as a saw and went to the door. She looked back. Beechy was lying with closed eyes, the lines about his mouth relaxed.
The sun had dropped behind a high mountain. The air was sultry. A tinge of rose had replaced the gold of the afternoon coloring. In the southwest an unobtrusive bank of cloud had appeared. The tumbleweed still stirred with every breath of air but everything else was still. Jerry could see now, what she had not noticed from above, parallel grooves in the ground through the middle of the hollow.
"That's strange! Those ruts look like the marks of wagon wheels, but how could a wagon get down here?" she thought. She hesitated an instant on the threshold. Fortunately the pool was on a level with the cabin. Had the shack been on the opposite side of the hollow she would have had a ten-foot drop before she reached the level. The small body of water looked a thousand miles away and the room behind her, which had seemed sinister and forbidding a while before, seemed a haven of refuge now. So quickly do values shift in the crises of life.
"The more you dread the thing you have to do the more you should hustle to get it behind you," Jerry admonished herself and made a dash for the pool. For an instant the air seemed full of flapping, dark wings, then it cleared. She kept her eyes resolutely away from the body of the calf. The water was low. She had to lie flat to reach it. She wasted time in trying to dip deep enough to get clear of the tumbleweed which floated on top. When she had it to her satisfaction she sat back on her heels and inspected the contents of the dripping can.