"He is dying," said Ajax. "No matter how they live, and a wiser Judge than any of us will pronounce on that, no matter how they live--are your own lives clean?--the meanest of these Chinese knows how to die. One moment, please."
He entered the room where Mary lay blind and deaf to the terror which had come at last. When Ajax returned, he said quietly: "Come and see the end of what you began. What? You hang back? By God!--you shall come."
Dominated by his eye and voice, the pack slunk into the bed-room. Upon Mary's once comely face the purple weals were criss-crossed; and sores had broken out wherever the cactus spines had pierced the flesh. A groan escaped the men who had wrought this evil, and glancing at each in turn, I caught a glimpse of a quickening remorse, of a horror about to assume colossal dimensions. The Cock-a-whoop cowboy was seized with a palsy; great tears rolled down the cheeks of the gaunt Missourian; one man began to swear incoherently, cursing himself and his fellows; another prayed aloud.
"He's dead!" shrieked Charlie.
At the grim word, moved by a common impulse, whipped to unreasonable panic as they had been whipped to unreasoning cruelty, the pack broke headlong from the room--and fled!
Long after they had gone, Mary opened his eyes.
"Coon Dogs coming?" he muttered. "Heap bad men!"
"They have come and gone," said Ajax. "They'll never come again, Mary. It's all right. Go to sleep."
Mary obediently closed his eyes.
"He'll recover," Ajax said. And he did.