“Hold on, pard! Ain’t you-all got some folks somewhere who ought to have this? Tell us where they are and we’ll see that they get it.”
The man shook his head. His breath was labored, and he spoke with difficulty as he whispered: “There ain’t anybody who’d care whether I’m dead or alive, except to get that gold, and I’d rather you’d have it. You’re white, anyway, and you’ve treated me white, both of you, and I’ve always been sorry I had to play Thomson Tuttle here that mean trick, because he was a gentleman about it, and sand clean through.”
Tom was still staring at him. “Stranger,” he said, “you’ve got the advantage of me. I can’t remember that I’ve ever set eyes on you before.”
The death glaze was coming in the man’s eyes and his failing whisper struggled to get past his stiffening lips.
“I held you up, and held a gun on you-all one night, last spring, up near the White Sands.”
“Oh, that time!” Tom exclaimed. “That was all right. I reckoned you-all had good reason for it.”
Bill Frank nodded. “Yes,” he whispered, “we had to—in the wagon—” Some of his words were unintelligible, but a sudden flash of inspiration leaped through Nick’s mind.
“Did you have Will Whittaker’s body? Who killed him? Tom, the whisky, quick! We must keep him alive till he can tell!”
The man’s lips were moving and Nick put his ear close to them and thought he caught the word “not,” but he was not sure. Bill Frank’s head moved from side to side, but whether he meant to shake it, or whether it was the death agony, they could not tell. Tom put the flask to his lips, but he could not swallow, and in another moment the death rattle sounded in his throat.
They waited beside the dead man’s body until every sign of life was extinct. They closed his eyes, straightened his limbs, and folded his hands upon his breast. Then said Tom: