Ping!
Almost over, as the rifle cracked, Ham had turned at the sound of his pursuers crashing through the bushes. Fulano swam high. He bore a proud head aloft, conscious of his brave duty. It was but a moment since he had dashed away, and the long lines of his wake still rippled against the hither bank.
We heard the bullet sing. It missed the man as he turned. It struck Fulano. Blood spirted from a great artery. He floundered forward.
Ham caught the bushes on the bank, pulled himself ashore, and clutched for the bridle.
Poor Fulano! He flung his head up and pawed the surface with a great spasm. He screamed a death-scream, like that terrible cry of anguish of his comrade martyred in the old heroic cause in Luggernel Alley. We could see his agonized eye turn back in the socket, sending toward us a glance of farewell.
Noble horse! again a saviour. He yielded and sank slowly away into that base ditch.
But Ham, was he safe? He had disappeared in the thicket. His pursuers called the hounds and galloped off to chase him round the slough.
Ham was safe. He got off to freedom. From his refuge in Chicago he writes me that he is “pop’lar”; that he has “sot up a Livery Institootion, and has a most a bewterful black colt a grownin’ up fur me.”
Ham was saved; but Fulano gone. Dead by Murker’s rifle. The brother had strangely avenged his brother, trampled to death in the far-away cañon of the Rocky Mountains. Strange Nemesis for a guiltless crime! That blood-stain for a righteous execution clung to him. Only his own blood-shedding could cleanse him.
We three on the bank looked at each other forlornly. The Horse, our Hero, had passed away from the scene, a martyr.