Marty straightened and stiffened himself.
“Help me to him. Something’s wrong with my legs. I’ll see for myself. If it must be, I’ll do it for myself.”
The frontiersman understood the sentiment and respected it. He had had to do a like hard duty for his own horseflesh before that, and he had always felt it a sort of murder. He did not look at Marty’s face as he carefully guided his wavering steps into the thicket and the presence of the suffering Comanche, where one look sufficed his master.
“Oh, you poor fellow!”
For an instant the tall head stooped to the level of the struggling animal, and a strange, expressive look passed between the great equine eyes and the misty ones of the man. Then Marty’s hand went swiftly around to his pocket, there was the click of a weapon, a flash and report, and Comanche moved no more.
More shaken and ill from this deed than from his terrible fall, Marty sat long in silence by Ephraim’s side beneath the eucalyptus trees; then suddenly rousing, exclaimed:
“Now, to find out the cause!”
It was not far to seek, though difficult to understand. Of all men in that countryside, gay, big-hearted George Cromarty had most friends and fewest enemies. He took life lightly, merrily, with a good word for the virtues of others and silence for their vices; yet there before them, unmistakably plain, was the trap that had been set for his life. A pit had been dug across the whole width of the road, shallow, indeed, but sufficiently deep to throw any horse passing over it. Its top had been screened with interlacing twigs, over which had been scattered soil and dust enough to hide them. One who rode with his eyes on the ground, as Antonio used, might easily, perhaps, have discovered the fiendish work; but he who rode with head upraised and his gaze on the distance would ride to his ruin as Marty had done. To make the treachery more secure, some sprays of wild grapes had been tightly stretched beneath the whole, and this showed a deliberation of evil that turned Ephraim sick, but the other man furious.
“Who did that will pay the price! I swear it!” he cried.