"Let me go, then," said the Texan.
"No!" gasped Robbins. "Yuh stay with Dave. I'm old, anyway. Promise yuh'll stick with him, no matter what happens to me!"
"I promise," said The Kid, and the two men shook hands.
Getting to the water hole and back again was a forlorn hope, but Robbins was past reasoning. Lurching through the door, he ran outside the hut and toward the tulles. Young Robbins cried after his father, and then covered his eyes.
There was a sudden crackling of revolver fire. Spurts of bluish smoke blossomed out from the high grass—half a score of them! Bill Robbins staggered on his feet, reeled on a few steps, and then fell. His body had been riddled.
Kid Wolf's touch was tender as he took the orphaned youth's hand in his own. But his voice, when he spoke, was like his eyes—hard as steel:
"Garvey will join him, Dave, or we will! And if we do, let's hope we'll meet it as bravely. I have a plan. If we escape, we must do it to-night. Can yo' stick it out till then?"
Young Robbins nodded. The death of his father had been a great shock to him, but he did not flinch. In that desperate hour, Kid Wolf knew that he no longer had a boy at his side, but a man!
How the day wore its way through to a close was ever afterward a mystery to them. Their throats were parched, and their eyes bloodshot. To make matters worse, their horses, too, were suffering. Blizzard nickered softly from time to time, but quieted when Kid Wolf called to him through the wall.
Night brought some relief. Again the moon rose upon the tragic scene,
and it grew cooler. Before the twilight had quite faded, Kid Wolf and
Dave Robbins saw something that made them boil inwardly—the burial of
Bill Robbins on Boot Hill!