But I couldn't be certain. The whine
of the wind that comes with a fire, the crackle of the fire itself, the
manifold sounds that echoed between the canyon walls and the pungent,
suffocating smoke, all conspired against clear thinking or hearing. I
listened a moment, but heard no more. Then, with time at a premium, I
hastened to straighten out the tangle of pack-animals. Mac loomed up in
the general blur with Lessard's body on his horse, as I led the others
back to where Piegan stood guard over Bevans.
"Ain't this hell!" he coughed. "That fire's right on top of us. We got
t' make the river in a hurry."
It was another minute's work to lash Gregory's body on one of the
pack-horses, and release the sullen Bevans from the weight of his dead
mount. As an afterthought, I looked in the pockets on his saddle, and
the first thing I discovered was a wad of paper money big enough to
choke an ox, as Piegan would say. I hadn't the time to investigate
further, so I simply cut the _anqueros_ off his saddle and flung them
across the horn of my own--and even in that swirl of smoke and sparks I
glowed with a sense of gratification, for it seemed that at last I was
about to shake hands with the ten thousand dollars I had mourned as
lost. Then Piegan and I drove Bevans ahead of us and moved the spoils of
war to the river brink, while MacRae hurried to the cottonwood grove
after our own neglected mounts; they had given us too good service to be
abandoned to the holocaust.
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