Wheeling their mounts, the posse, who had lost not a man in the encounter, raced back to the overturned coach. The vehicle, riddled with bullets and arrows, resembled a butcher's shop. On the ground near it was the body of the driver, while the guard, hit in a dozen places, lay half in and half out of the coach, dead.
Young Robbins had left four men alive when he made his escape toward Lost Springs. There now remained only two. And one of these, it could be seen, was dying.
"Dad!" Robbins cried. "Are yuh hurt?"
"Got a bullet in the shoulder and one in the knee," replied his father, crawling out with difficulty. "Good thing yuh got here when yuh did! See to Claymore. He's hit bad. I'm all right."
Kid Wolf drew out the still breathing form of the other survivor. He was quick to note that the man was beyond any human aid. The frontiersman, his six-gun still emitting a curl of blue smoke, was placed in the shade of the coach, and water was given to him.
"I'm all shot to pieces, boys," he gasped. "I'm goin' fast—but I'm glad the Apaches won't have me to—chop up afterward. Take my word for it—there's some white man—behind this. There's twenty thousand dollars in the express box——"
His words trailed off, and with a moan, he breathed his last. Kid Wolf gently drew a blanket over his face and then turned to the others.
"I think he's right," he mused, as he took off his wide-brimmed hat.
"When Indians murdah, theah's usually a white man's brains behind them."
Garvey, when Kid Wolf had left with his quickly gathered posse, went to the bar and took several drinks of his own liquor. It was a fiery red whisky distilled from wheat, and of the type known to the Indians as "fire water." It did not put Garvey in any better humor. Wiping his lips, he left his saloon and crossed the road to a tiny one-room adobe.
A young Indian was sleeping in the shade, and Garvey awakened him with a few well-directed kicks. The Indian's eyes widened with fear at the sight of the white man's rage-distorted face, and when he had heard his orders, delivered in the hoarse Apache tongue, he raced for his pony, tethered in the bushes near him, and drummed away.