"Say, how much longer will it take yore friends to do th' buryin' act?" asked Frisco, irritably. "I'm plumb tired of waiting—these wounds hurt like blazes, too."

"Reckon they're coming now," was the reply. "I hear—yes, here they are."

"I owe you ten dollars, Hall," Frisco remarked, trivial things now entering his mind. "Reckon you won't get it, neither."

"Oh, pay me in h—l!" Hall snapped.

"Yes," Buck was saying, "he shore was white. He knowed he was going an' he went like th' man he was—saving a friend. 'Tain't th' first time Frenchy McAllister's saved my life, neither."

Frisco glanced around and his face flashed with a look of recognition, but he held his tongue; not so with Curtis, who stared at him in surprise and stepped forward.

"Good G-d! It's Davis! What ever got you into this?"

"Easy money an' a gun fight," Davis, alias Frisco, replied.

"Tough luck, tough luck," Curtis muttered slowly.

"D—n tough, if you asks me," Frisco growled.

"What happened to th' others?" Curtis asked, referring to three men with whom he and Frisco had punched and prospected several years before.

"Little Dan went out in that same gun fight, Joe Baird was got by th' posse next day, an' George Wild an' I got into th' mountains an' was separated. I got free after a sixty-mile chase, but I don't know how George made out. We had stuck up a gold caravan an' killed two men what was with it. They was th' only fellers to pull their guns against us."

"Well, I'm d—d!" ejaculated Curtis. "An' so that crowd went bad!"

"Say, for th' Lord's sake, get things moving," cried Hall, angrily. "If we've got to die make it quick—or else shoot that infernal Greaser—he's got on my nerves with his tramp, tramp, tramp! Wish I'd 'a gone with Shaw 'stead of waiting for my own funeral."

Buck surveyed them. "Got anything to say?"

"Not me—I've had mine," replied Frisco, toying with a bandage. Then he started to say something but changed his mind. "Oh, well, what's th' use! Go ahead."

"Don't drag it out," growled Hall. "Say, you got my rope there?" he demanded suddenly, eying the coils slung over Skinny's shoulder. "No, you ain't. I want my own, savvy?"

"Oh, we ain't got time to hunt for no ropes," rejoined Skinny. "One's as good as another, ain't it?"

"Yes, I reckon so—hustle it through," Hall replied, sullenly.

"Go ahead, you fellers," ordered Hopalong as some of his friends went first down the trail after the two sent to the camp for the horses. "Come on, Sanchez! Fall in there!"

When the procession reached the bottom of the trail Buck halted it to wait for the horses and his prisoners took one more look around.

"Say, Peters, where's th' cayuses we had in that corral?" asked Hall, surprised.

"Oh, we got them out th' first night—we wasn't taking no chances," replied the foreman. "They're somewhere near th' camp now."

As the horse herd was driven up Sanchez made his last play. All were intent upon tightening cinches, the more intent because of the impending and disagreeable task, when he slipped like a shadow through the group and throwing himself across a likely looking pinto (he knew the horse), headed in a circular track for the not too distant chaparral.