The brown horse had halted, but as Jane Hunter slipped to the ground, holding Beck's sagging body with all her strength, he stepped forward, in behind the rocks: their haven....
"Oh, they got him!" Bobby sobbed. "They got him...."
She might have meant Hilton, but if so the pity, the regret in her voice was a mourning of her dead love, not the dead lover; or she might have meant Tom Beck and the tone might have been sympathy for the woman she had come to understand, the woman who had respect for her and who she could respect....
They let Tom's body to the trail. The horse moved off. Hastily Bobby ripped open his shirt....
"Through the hips," she whispered. "Through the hips....
"Look!"—starting up. "He's movin' his foot. It didn't get his spine; it didn't get his spine...."
She tore open her shirt and tugged at the undergarment beneath it. She stuffed it into the wound deftly, staying the blood while Jane Hunter, Beck's head in her lap, cried aloud.
"Listen!" Bobby knelt beside the other woman, hands on her shoulders, peering into her face.... "You're safe here. They've got 'em cut off from this trail below....
"My horse is fresh. I'm goin' to your ranch for help. He ain't goin' to die, ma'am.... I promise you that.... He ain't goin' to die!"
She was gone and Jane Hunter, half faint, clinging to that promise as the last, the only thing in life, lowered her lips to her lover's eyes.