Hard words and a wrangle followed, but Smith did not change expression, and there was a backdown. “Have you fellows let Du Sang get away while you were playing fool here?” he asked.
“Du Sang’s over the hill there on his horse, and full of fight yet,” exclaimed one.
“Then we will look him up,” suggested Smith. “Come, Seagrue.”
“Don’t go over there. He’ll get you if you do,” cried Gorman.
“Let us see about that. Seagrue, you and Karg walk ahead. Don’t duck or run, either of you. Go on.”
Just over the brow of the hill near which the fight had taken place, a man lay below a ledge of granite. The horse from which he had fallen was grazing close by, but the man had dragged himself out of the blinding sun to the shade of the sagebrush above the rock––the trail of it all lay very plain on the hard ground. Watching him narrowly, Smith, with his prisoners ahead and the cowboys riding in a circle behind, approached.
“Du Sang?”
The man in the sagebrush turned his head.
Smith walked to him and bent down. “Are you suffering much, Du Sang?”