Bud quickly sprang off the back of his horse; and together and as gently as possible the two boys lowered the wounded miner from the saddle and laid him down on a little mound of grass. A few rods away a small stream of water wound its way, half-hidden by tall grass and bushes and low trees, through the little valley where they had stopped.
"Get your hat full of water," Thure said, as he bent down to see if the bandage over the wound was still in its place. "Seems to me he ought to be getting his senses back by this time."
Bud at once started off on the run for the water and soon was back with his broad-brimmed felt hat full of the cooling fluid; and, kneeling down by the side of the wounded man, who now lay quiet, with eyes closed, although he was still muttering incoherently, he bathed the hot forehead and the swollen lumps on the back of his head.
Suddenly the miner's eyes opened and stared wonderingly around him and up into the faces of the two boys. For a minute he did not seem to be able to comprehend what had happened. Then the blank wondering look suddenly left his eyes.
"Did they get the gold?" and his hand went quickly to his waist. There was no belt there. "Gone! A good twenty pounds of as fine gold as was ever dug from the earth, gone!—Gods, if they had but given me any kind of a show, they would not have got it so easily!" and his eyes flamed and he attempted to sit up, but fell back with a groan and a whitening face.
For a minute or two he lay with eyes closed, breathing heavily. Evidently he was trying to collect his thoughts, to realize his situation. When he opened his eyes again there was a solemn, an awed look in them that had not been there before, and the anger had gone.
"I have been stabbed," he said slowly, "and I am dying."
"No, no. The knife did not go near your heart. It struck too low. You will soon be all right again. Wait until we get you home and mother will soon make a whole man of you. Mother is about the best nurse in all California," and Thure gripped one of the hard toil-worn hands and smiled encouragingly.
"No." As the man spoke his eyes never once left Thure's face. "No, I am dying. I know. I was once a surgeon, an army surgeon." For a moment his eyes darkened, as if with bitter recollections. "But, what matters the past now? Let it bury its dead," and he smiled grimly. "This is death. I know. I have seen many die just this way. Internal hemorrhage, we doctors called it. The blood from the wound is flowing into my body. I can feel it. I have half an hour, possibly an hour to live; and then—" The awed look in the eyes deepened, and, for a couple of minutes, he did not speak, but lay staring straight up into the blue skies. Suddenly his white lips tightened and he turned to Thure.
"How far is it to your home and to your mother?" he asked abruptly.