It is unlikely that Walt Lampson had thought of Whitey, until he chanced to see this action. Then he spoke, and not unkindly.
"You'd better get back there behind the hill, kid," Walt said. "This ain't no place for you."
And so Whitey rose, and returned to where Monty was tethered, and he was not ashamed of the fact that he stumbled as he walked. But Injun still crouched out behind the boulder. There was no quivering of his nerves. The only fear he might have had was that if he returned he would be sent to the rear; and he was too wily to take a chance. So most of what followed was seen by Injun, and heard about by Whitey.
There came the time when the surviving sheepmen could no longer remain in the house. Like a wise leader, Donald Spellman divided his forces, and ten crouching figures emerged from the front of the house, and ten from the back, and were outlined against the flames, as they scurried away. How they were harried and followed and shot down would not make pleasant reading, and what happened to those who were captured it is not necessary to write, as you will remember what the cattlemen had sworn to do at their meeting.
After this, if there had been any who doubted Mart Cooley's skill as a gunman, they doubted no longer. And it was the misfortune of Donald Spellman to come under Mart's aim. Or perhaps it was his good fortune to be mortally wounded by a bullet, instead of ending his life as did the captives. But Spellman had something to say before he died, and he said it to Walt Lampson.
"You got us," he gasped, "an' you got us right. An' I only got one thing to tell you, an' to tell you quick. I didn't plan that cattle stampede. It was a dirty trick."
"Who did?" Walter asked eagerly.
And Spellman answered that question with the last words he ever spoke.