“Well, that’s for the future, anyhow,” he observed, and moved to a bush some yards away. “Let’s take it easy. Money, one of my deputies, has gone in for a wagon. I don’t expect him for a couple of hours or so. We must keep it company,” he added, nodding his head in the direction of the dead man.
They sat down and silently lit their pipes. Fyles was the first to speak.
“Guess I’ve got to thank you,” he said, as though that sort of thing was quite out of his province.
Tresler shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “Thank my poor mare.” Then he added, with a bitter laugh, “Why, but for the accident of his fall, I’m not sure he wouldn’t have escaped. I’m pretty weak-kneed when it comes to dropping a man in cold blood.”
The other shook his head.
“No; he wouldn’t have escaped. You underestimate yourself. But even if you had missed I had him covered with my carbine. I was watching the whole thing down here. You see, Money and I came on behind. I don’t suppose we were more than a few minutes after you. That mare you were riding was a dandy. I see she’s done.”
“Yes,” Tresler said sorrowfully. “And I’m not ashamed to say it’s hit me hard. She did us a good turn.”
“And she owed it to us.”
“You mean when she upset everything during the fight?”