“Yes, that's true,” he admitted with some, show of reluctance, “but then, Tom, you know as well as me that Injuns is different. They ain't human, an' this here's a white woman——”
“That's right.” The Youngest Bad Man out of the wisdom of his twenty-two summers hastened to Bill's assistance. “An' child-bearin' with a white woman means doctors an' nurses an' feather beds an' what-all.”
The Wounded Bad Man flashed the youth a grateful glance.
“You bet that's right, Bob. An' besides, when that woman o' mine had them two twins I was doin' a five year stretch in Yuma—so you can see I don't know nothin' about it. All I know is what I've heard. She didn't even call a neighbor's woman—just brings them twins into the world one day, an' gets out an' hustles a livin' for 'em the next.”
“Well,” retorted the bedeviled Worst Bad Man, “I wasn't tryin' to pass the buck. Just a-ruminatin' around for information.” He rose wearily. “Come on,” he growled, and led the way.
The Three Bad Men walked up the draw to Terrapin Tanks. In reverential awe they stood beside the covered wagon, parted the side curtains and looked in.
On a straw tick, covered with blankets, lay a woman. She was young, with great brown eyes alight with fever and with the luster of approaching motherhood. A long braid of brown hair lay across her white breast; she moaned in her pain and terror and wretchedness.
The Wounded Bad Man found a tin cup and gave her generously of his all too scant supply of water. The Youngest Bad Man got a clean towel out of the tail-box, wet it and washed her burning face and hands. The Worst Bad Man, whose courage, for all his deviltry, had its limitations, went and sat down on the tongue of the wagon and tried to think. But scourged with the horror of this most terrible of human travail, he fled up the arroyo out of hearing. On the top of one of the little black volcanic hills, from which eminence he could look down on the wagon, he stood, active, alert, like a mountain sheep on guard, and beckoned to his friends to join him. The Youngest Bad Man obeyed his frantic signals, but The Wounded Bad Man stayed at the wagon.
“You've got to be easy on me, son, at a time like this,” said The Worst Bad Man humbly. “I'm an awful tough old bird, but I can't stand that. It ain't no place for the likes o' me. What's to be done?”
“Nothin' much, I guess.” The Youngest Bad Man threw out his hands in desperation. “Bill says she ain't got a chance.”