“Good God!” he cried aloud. “Johnny! Johnny!”
And then when Johnny Watson did not answer, he did not need to look. He knew Johnny Watson was dead—dead at the side of his partner who had slept!
The young man staggered to his feet and stared wildly around. Each rock and tree and bush stood out clearly in the moonlight with its shadow flung out very dark and very distinct. His revolver was rigid in the tense steel of his grip. There was nothing, there was no one. And yet, while he slept, some one had crept upon his partner.
He turned to where Watson lay. And suddenly, as he saw how the man was lying, the way an arm lay at his side, the other arm flung out, the truth came upon him; and without looking at the wound he knew that death had not come upon Watson while the two men lay side by side.
It had come while Farley stood alone upon the top of the cliff staring out into Devil’s Pocket, dreaming! For as Watson lay now, so had he lain when Farley came down to him. He had been dead when his partner called to him, saying they would sleep side by side!
“While I was up on the rock,” Farley muttered dully, “they got him.”
He stooped low over the prostrate body and gently, tenderly, he moved it so that it lay face-up. The moonlight showed well how Johnny Watson’s death had found him. At the side of his bared neck was a cut such as a broad-bladed knife would make, a great gash, two inches long. Just one blow had been struck, just one such blow needed.
Farley got slowly to his feet and for a little stood looking down into the dead man’s face. And the face of the man who looked into the dead eyes was as oddly quiet and calm.
“They got you, Johnny,” Farley was saying in a voice void of expression, “with me in calling distance— Oh, Johnny!”
For a moment he stood, his face sunk into his two brown hands. And then suddenly he whirled about, his head lifted, his arm dung out, shaken with a frenzy of rage.