He dropped on a knee beside the sprawling, huddled figure. No second
glance was needed to see that the man was dead. Life had been trampled out
of him almost instantly and his features battered beyond any possible
recognition. Unused to scenes of violence, the stranger stooping over him
felt suddenly sick. It made him shudder to remember that if he could have
found a way down in the darkness he, too, would have slept in the warm
sand of the dry wash. If he had, the fate of this man would have been
his.
Under the doubled body was a canteen. The trembling fingers of the
tenderfoot unscrewed the cork. Tipping the vessel, he drank avidly. One
swallow, a second, then a few trickling drops. The canteen had been almost
empty.
Uncovering, he stood bareheaded before the inert body and spoke gently in
the low, soft voice one instinctively uses in the presence of the dead.
"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."
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 here alone, but it's what I've got to do to save
myself."