At this moment the moon sank beneath the horizon.
"I guess he's come to the jumping-off place," said Stephens, as Backus sank into absolute unconsciousness. "Let's carry him right back to the fire."
Once more they laid him down beside that prehistoric hearth, and the ruddy glow lit up the horrid spectacle of his distorted face. They tried to warm him and keep the life in him a little longer; but it was in vain. The laboured breath came slower and slower; the feeble pulse waxed fainter and fainter; the chill hand of death was there, and nought that they could do was of any avail; and after a little while Stephens was aware that the thing that lay in front of the fire was but a disfigured corpse.
Between them, he and Felipe raised it, and laid it at one side of the dwelling, and covered it from sight with the blanket. When they returned to the fire, they stood there side by side gazing at the embers in a long silence. They stood as it were in the presence of death, and neither the white man nor the red had any mind to break the solemnity of the scene.
Suddenly there came a low, rustling, slithering sound from the stones in the corner behind them, as a large snake glided out across the floor, and swiftly vanished into the darkness without.
Stephens gave an involuntary shudder. "That brute must have been in the corner there all the time I was here," he said.
"Yes, Sooshiuamo," answered Felipe in an awestruck voice, "he was there, but he did not touch you. Now he has gone to tell his brother who struck your enemy that he is dead. The snakes must be your friends; they do not hurt you; they only kill your enemies for you"; and as if impelled to penitence by what he regarded as a supernatural warning, he turned to the prospector and poured out in a flood a full confession of all he had heard and seen and suspected of Backus's schemes, and of his dealings with the Navajos.
Stephens listened aghast. Mahletonkwa certainly had told him that his message to the governor had been stopped, but he had been loath to believe that a white man could play such a treacherous game, and side with savages against his own countryman. It was natural for the American to prefer to think that the Navajo had lied; but, if Felipe spoke true, the wretched man who lay dead before them had really and actually sold him into the hands of the Navajos. Then arose the question—what had been his object? There might be more dangers around, more plots that Felipe knew nothing of? "I never liked him, it's true, but why should he play such a mean trick merely for that? If he really did destroy my letters asking for the soldiers, he must have done it that very hour that I gave them to him. It wasn't till the next day that I knocked him into the ditch, so he couldn't have done it out of revenge for that blow I gave him. I wonder, now, if he could have kept a grudge against me for that old wound at Apache Cañon? Some folks find it mighty hard to forgive."
"Well," he continued aloud, addressing Felipe, "I sha'n't bear any malice against you, young 'un. I reckon that—well—that fellow just used you, and you aint much more to blame than an idiot—pity you hadn't got more sense; but that's enough—I'll never think of it again."
Felipe looked up at him with dumb gratitude in his eyes.