“Friend, I couldn’t save your life, but your water has saved mine, I reckon. Anyhow, it gives me another chance to fight for it. I wish I could do something for you ... carry a message to your folks and tell them how it happened.” 14
He dropped down again beside the dead man and rifled the pockets. In them he found two letters addressed in an illiterate hand to James Diller, Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. An idea flashed into his brain and for a moment held him motionless while he worked it out. Why not? This man was about his size, dressed much like him, and so mutilated that identification was impossible.
From his own pocket he took a leather bill book and a monogrammed cigarcase. With a sharp stone he scarred the former. The metal case he crushed out of shape beneath the heel of his boot. Having first taken one twenty dollar yellowback from the well-padded book, he slipped it and the cigarcase into the inner coat pocket of the dead man. Irregularly in a dozen places he gashed with his knife the derby hat he was wearing, ripped the band half loose, dragged it in the dust, and jumped on it till the hat was flat as a pancake. Finally he kicked it into the sand a dozen yards away.
“The cattle would get it tangled in their hoofs and drag it that far with them,” he surmised.
The soft gray hat of the dead man he himself appropriated. Again he spoke to the lifeless body, lowering his voice to a murmur.
“I reckon you wouldn’t grudge me this if you knew. I’m up against it. If I get out of these hills alive I’ll be lucky. But if I do—well, it won’t do you any harm to be mistaken for me, and it will accommodate me mightily. I hate to leave you 15 here alone, but it’s what I’ve got to do to save myself.”
He turned away and plodded up the dry creek bed.
The sun was at the meridian when three heavily armed riders drew up at the mouth of the cañon. They fell into the restful, negligent postures of horsemen accustomed to take their ease in the saddle.
“Do you figure maybe he’s working up to the headwaters of Dry Sandy?” one suggested.