A man—one of the outlaw guards—was coolly recharging his rifle, with his gaze bent upon a bleeding form before him. There, pale and ghastly, lay the form of James Meagreson; not dead, but apparently dying. The lower portion of his body lay still and motionless, but his head and shoulders writhed to and fro, while his arms were tossed wildly about, in the intensity of his agony.
Wild cries and bitter blasphemy poured from his lips, and he bitterly cursed those surrounding him. The fatal missile had entered his stomach, and passing through, had broken his back.
The men did not attempt to remove him or to bandage his wound; they saw that such a course would only be inflicting useless torment upon him, that his time had come; his life slowly ebbing away with the fast-fleeting moments. Two of them knelt beside his head, and kept him from hastening his end by the useless struggles.
James Duaber spoke to him kindly, imploring him to confess before he died, but his only answer was bitter revilings and curses; the fearful words, coming as they did from lips fast chilling in the embrace of death, caused even those strong men to turn aside with a shudder.
And thus he died, still reckless and defiant; a fitting end for his long and sinful life. There were grave faces that surrounded him, as breath went out, but no tears, no grief at his tragic end. Their injuries had been far too deep.
By this time the majority of the troop had collected, alarmed by the disturbance, and a number of them were detailed by their chief, to prepare a grave for the dead man. It was soon completed, and the corpse was quietly lowered into the bark-lined pit; then the damp mold covered him forever from mortal ken. There was no whispered prayer, no murmured blessing over the unhallowed grave; and nothing but the long narrow mound remained to show where the unfortunate being had been laid, for his last long sleeping-place.
Unloved he had lived, and unloved he had died. Poor James Meagreson!