"And drink, Sim."
"Ay, and drink. I am as thirsty myself as if I had been lost on an alkali plain. Bill, will you get us some drink, plenty of water, with just a drop of spirit in it; there is sure to be plenty in the house somewhere."
Royce soon returned with a large jar of cold water and a bottle of spirits.
"Only a few drops of spirits. Sim, if you don't want to get inflammation in that hand of yours."
"What had I better do for it, doctor?"
"Well, it will be better to have that stump of the middle finger taken out altogether. I could do it for you if I could stand and had a knife of the right shape here. As it is, you can't do better than wrap your hand up in plenty of cloths, and keep them wet, and then put your arm in a sling. What's yours, Lightning?"
"I am hit in the shoulder, doctor. I don't think that it is bleeding now."
"Well, you had better get Bill to bathe it in hot water, then lay a plug of cotton over the hole, and bandage it up; the doctor at the fort will get the ball out for you as soon as you get down there. He is a good man, they say, and, anyhow, he gets plenty of practice with pistol wounds at El Paso."
Royce did his best for his two friends. Then they all sat quietly talking until the young officer came out from the house.
"We have been searching it from top to bottom," he said. "There is a lot of booty stored away. I want you to have a look at the two leaders of these scoundrels; they have both been shot. Don Ramon said that he believed they were the murderers of his son, and that two of you might recognize them if they were, as you did a horse trade with them."