Brent lifted him at a leap across the arroyo.
Poor Pumps!
His hind feet slipped on the time-smoothed rock. He fell short. He plunged down a dozen feet among the rough boulders of the torrent-bed. Brent was out of the saddle almost before he struck, raising him.
No, he would never rise again. Both his fore-legs were broken at the knee. He rested there, kneeling on the rocks where he fell.
Brent groaned. The horse screamed horribly, horribly,—there is no more agonized sound,—and the scream went echoing high up the cliffs where the red sunlight rested.
It costs a loving master much to butcher his brave and trusty horse, the half of his knightly self; but it costs him more to hear him shriek in such misery. Brent drew his pistol to put poor Pumps out of pain.
Armstrong sprang down and caught his hand.
“Stop!” he said in his hoarse whisper.
He had hardly spoken, since we started. My nerves were so strained, that this mere ghost of a sound rang through me like a death yell, a grisly cry of merciless and exultant vengeance. I seemed to hear its echoes, rising up and swelling in a flood of thick uproar, until they burst over the summit of the pass and were wasted in the crannies of the towering mountain-flanks above.
“Stop!” whispered Armstrong. “No shooting! They’ll hear. The knife!”