He cut open the boot and found that a bullet had severed a small artery. Making a rude tourniquet, he succeeded in checking, to some extent, the spurting flow that was sapping his strength.
He bandaged the wound as best he could with dressings torn from his shirt. He tried to stand, and found that the loss of so much blood had sapped his strength to a surprising degree. He could, however, support his weight by the aid of his horse. His mind was clearer. He found himself trying to analyze the events that had led up to the massacre, while his eyes studied the Gap. Why had the Texas Rangers been sent for? If they were not wanted in Bryant's Basin, it would have been a simple matter to have ignored them as had always been done in the past. Someone had sent for the Texas Rangers. Someone had objected with bullets to their coming.
Did outlaws actually live in Bryant's Basin? If so, why were they there? Why had the Rangers been sent for? What could possibly happen in the Cavendish domain that the stern old man could not handle himself? These, and countless other questions, raced through the Ranger's brain while he continued to observe the Gap.
He noted that the sun was gone, and it was growing dark. This left him in less danger of capture, but increased the difficulty of the ride. The rocky footing was hazardous under the best of conditions. In the dark, this peril was increased tenfold.
He remounted after a struggle with weakness. At first he tried to guide the horse away from Bryant's Basin, but this seemed only to confuse the beast, so he gave up the attempt and let Silver have his head. At intervals he was compelled to steady himself like a drunken man.
A starless night fell into the Gap, and with its coming the danger of pursuit was ended. A chance encounter was all the rider had to fear, and there was little likelihood of this. For a while his mind went blank. He was roused from a sort of stupor by the sound of running water. The horse had halted, while the Texas Ranger dozed, and was drinking from a creek. A sudden uncontrollable thirst assailed the man. Once more he climbed painfully from the saddle. Slumping to the ground, he crawled toward a stream that gurgled over stones.
Cold water had never tasted sweeter. He sipped slowly, then raised his head to let the cool draft quench the burning in his throat. About to drink again, he paused and grew tense. The sound he heard might have been a night bird, but the trained ear of the Ranger detected a peculiar quality in it.
"Odd," he thought. "That sounded as if it came from a human throat."
He waited to catch the next call if it were repeated. He didn't see that Silver, too, was tense. The birdlike trill sounded again, nearer this time. The horse reacted unexpectedly to the call. Silver jerked back, and the reins slipped from the wounded man's hand. While he watched in consternation, the white horse scampered off in the direction of the sound.
Stunned by this new misfortune, the wounded man listened to the hoofbeats until they were swallowed by the night. Not until then did he try to call. His voice was barely a whisper. Desertion by Silver was the worst possible thing that could have happened. Pursuit of the horse was out of the question. The wounded man couldn't even stand alone. With such philosophy as he could muster, he turned and finished the drink that might cost him his life. Then he dashed water over his face, which had become caked with blood, sweat, and alkali dust. The wound on his forehead was a minor one, but it smarted frightfully as the water touched it.
He determined to make himself as comfortable as possible while he had the opportunity and plenty of water. He turned his attention to his other wounds. Removing his shirt, he felt gingerly of his left shoulder. His left arm had been useless to him. Now he knew why. The bullet was embedded in the flesh. He realized that this might cause considerable trouble later on, but there was little he could do there in the darkness, other than to wash the wound and bandage it clumsily. The bullet was sunk deep, probably to the bone. He rightly reasoned that some of the force had been lost by the bullet's first striking a rock, and entering his arm on a ricochet. Otherwise the bone would have been broken.
His shoulder fixed to the best of his ability, he looked at his wounded foot again. It was difficult to determine much about the wound in the darkness, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. When he had bathed and redressed the foot, he found that he could stand. He had to support himself by clinging to a rock, and most of his weight was taken on the uninjured leg, but he was definitely stronger.
One thought remained uppermost in the Texas Ranger's mind. "Must live," he breathed, "must fight through somehow so I can tell what happened to the others. Come back with more men—learn what's going on at the Cavendish place."
If he could stay in the stream, he'd leave no trail. He started slowly, working his way along against the current, clinging to rocks when they were within reach, crawling on his stomach when his wounded leg gave out. Frequently he paused to rest, still remaining in the stream. He was soaked through, but the cold water was pleasant. It chilled the burning of his wounds and made the pain more tolerable.
The stream took him close to one wall of the canyon, the wall on his left. Against the current, his progress was painfully slow, but it was progress.
Somewhere in the darkness ahead, he heard the sound of falling water. This animated him. A falls might mean some sort of gorge, a tiny cave perhaps, in which a man might hide until his wounds were healed. By resting frequently, the wounded man kept going longer than he thought possible. At length he reached the falls.
The water dropped a scant four feet from a ledge. With his one good hand, the wounded Ranger pulled himself up on the ledge, and there his strength abandoned him. He slumped half in the stream, half out of it, and sank, completely spent, into a dense void of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER III
THE CAVE
When he awakened, the wounded Texas Ranger realized that it was well past daybreak; the sun was high in the cloudless sky and beating down on the ledge. It must have been the sun, shining directly into the man's eyes, that had roused him. When he moved he felt a new torment of pain in every fiber of his being. His wounds had stiffened. His right foot and leg, and left shoulder and arm, were utterly useless. Movement of these limbs made stabbing pains shoot the entire length of his body. He lay quietly for some time, experimenting with the slightest movements until he had managed to turn so that he could look about him.
The ledge that had served as a resting place at night was a dangerous refuge in the daytime. A discovery buoyed his hope. He saw that the water came from an opening a few yards back on the ledge. The opening was large enough for a man to enter standing up, with room to spare. Inside he would be sure of concealment and a plentiful supply of water. Unless someone actually entered the cave, he would be comparatively secure. His only considerations would be hunger, weakness, and complications that might set in from the wounds.
Food would be the problem. Even with a good horse it would take more riding than he could do in his present state to reach the nearest food. Without weapons of any sort, he could scarcely hunt, even if there were game to be found in the barren sun-baked Gap. Food therefore was out of the question. He must content himself with water until he was strong enough to travel far on foot.
He crawled painfully toward the cave and stopped just beyond the entrance. Inside, it widened out surprisingly. Torrents of water in some ages past must have churned furiously, seeking exit through the portal, to carve away the heavy stone in such a manner. The stream came from somewhere in the deep, dim recesses of the cave. Gravel and shale lined the water's edge. This hard ground would serve the Texas Ranger as a rough couch, perhaps for many days to come.
The outlook was desperate, yet the man felt that there must be some reason why his life had been spared thus far. It wasn't that he was afraid to die. At any time during the past few hours death would have been a welcome relief to the pain of living. Some voice deep within him kept telling him that he must live, must fight for life so that he might