"Have I?" asked the rustler blandly. "Did I say anything about a pardner?"
His eye fell on the three still figures lying on the hillside in a row. Not a twitching muscle in his face showed what he was thinking, that they might have been full of splendid life and vigor if Dug Doble had not put a match to the chaparral back of Bear Cañon. The man had murdered them just as surely as though he had shot them down with a rifle. For weeks Shorty had been getting his affairs in order to leave the country, but before he went he intended to have an accounting with one man.
Dillon came up to Sanders and spoke in an awed voice. "What do you aim to do with … these, Sanders?" His hand indicated the bodies lying near.
"Send horses up for them," Dave said. "You can take all the men back to camp with you except three to help me watch the fire. Tell Mr. Crawford how things are."
The men crept down the hill like veterans a hundred years old. Ragged, smoke-blackened, and grimy, they moved like automatons. So great was their exhaustion that one or two dropped out of line and lay down on the charred ground to sleep. The desire for it was so overmastering that they could not drive their weighted legs forward.
A man on horseback appeared and rode up to Dave and Shorty. The man was Bob Hart. The red eyes in his blackened face were sunken and his coat hung on him in crisped shreds. He looked down at the bodies lying side by side. His face worked, but he made no verbal comment.
"We piled into a cave. Some of the boys couldn't stand it," Dave explained.
Bob's gaze took in his friend. The upper half of his body was almost naked. Both face and torso were raw with angry burns. Eyebrows had disappeared and eyes were so swollen as to be almost closed. He was gaunt, ragged, unshaven, and bleeding. Shorty, too, appeared to have gone through the wars.
"You boys oughtta have the doc see you," Hart said gently. "He's down at camp now. One of Em's men had an arm busted by a limb of a tree fallin' on him. I've got a coupla casualties in my gang. Two or three of 'em runnin' a high fever. Looks like they may have pneumonia, doc says. Lungs all inflamed from swallowin' smoke…. You take my hawss and ride down to camp, Dave. I'll stick around here till the old man sends a relief."
"No, you go down and report to him, Bob. If Crawford has any fresh men I'd like mine relieved. They've been on steady for 'most two days and nights. Four or five can hold the fire here. All they need do is watch it."