Prather, in his agony of mind, had moments of wondering envy as he watched Jack's changing expression. He could see that Jack, in entire detachment from his problem of fighting Leddy, was thinking soberly in the silence of the desert, unconscious in his absorption of the presence of any other human being. Suddenly his eyes opened wide in the luminousness of a happy discovery; his lips turned a smile of supreme satisfaction, and his face seemed to be giving back the light of the sun.
"It's all right!" he said. "Yes, everything is going to be all right!"
"How?" asked Prather wistfully, feeling the infection of the confident ring of Jack's tone.
"There is one horse left," said Jack. "He is in better condition than Leddy imagines. When darkness comes you can get away with him and by morning he will have brought you to water at Las Cascadas, halfway on the range trail. Then you will be quite safe."
"Yes! Yes!" Prather half rose, his breath coming fast, his eyes ravenous.
"And in return you will give Little Rivers back its water rights! Is that a bargain?" Jack asked.
"Give up my concession and all it means to me! Give it up absolutely—its millions!" objected Prather, in an uncontrollable impulse of greed.
"King Richard III, you remember," Jack declared, with a trace of his old humor breaking out over the new aspect of the situation, "said he would give his kingdom for a horse. He could not get the horse and he lost both his kingdom and his life. If he had been able to make the trade he might have saved his life and perhaps—who knows?—have won another kingdom."
"I will save my life!" Prather concluded; but under his breath he added bitterly: "And you get both the store and Little Rivers!" in the prehensile instinct which gains one thing only to covet another.
"You have the papers for the concession with you?" Jack asked.