"Well," sighed Winch, "all I'll do then is just take a pack-needle and put in a stitch or two. Remember when Dick Ross's horse...."
"You'll take some warm water and soap and wash me off," said Standing emphatically. "Then you'll make me one of your infernal compresses out of clean cloth; and after that you'll leave me alone.... Tell me about my horse, old Sunlight. So Gallup had him killed for me?"
"Somebody pretty near blowed his head off with buckshot," Billy Winch told him, and again twinkling fires of anger flickered in the little man's eyes. "If Gallup didn't have the job done, who did? I ask you!"
Timber-Wolf stared at the wall. Within him, too, rose scorching anger, that resurgent bitter flood which was not lessened now because in the first place it had leaped upon him unexpectedly, and had thus been the cause of his humiliation. But within him there was another emotion, one of deep grief; for he loved a good horse, no man more. And Sunlight was his pet and his trusted friend, and had been, for many a wilderness week, his only companion.
"You didn't leave him suffering any, Bill?" His voice sounded cold and impersonal and matter-of-fact. Yet Billy Winch understood and answered softly:
"I stopped long enough to make sure, Timber. But I didn't have to shoot him; he just rared his head up and looked at me straight in the eye, as man to man, so help me God, and fell back ... dead. No; he didn't suffer much."
Bruce Standing was silent a long time, his eyes brooding, his brows drawn after a fashion which Billy Winch could make nothing certain of; anger and bitterness or a sign of his own bodily pain. They heard spurred boots in the hall, returning. Then a quick look passed between Timber-Wolf and Billy Winch, and Timber-Wolf said hastily, dropping his voice and speaking with a peculiar softness:
"When you get a chance, you take the boys and see that old Sunlight is moved out of this skunk town; he's too fine a little horse to take his last rest here. Out on a hilltop, somewhere; looking toward the east, Bill. And a good, deep hole and ... leave the saddle and bridle on him, Bill."