"I'm not thinking of offering myself as a target for them," the other laughed. "They're still there," he added a minute later as he stepped into the chamber. "Them shooting you as they did, without warning, seems to indicate that they've orders to wipe us out, if possible. They're deputies. I bumped into Corrigan right after I left the bank building, and I suppose he has set them on us."
"I reckon so. Seems it ain't possible, though," Levins added, doubtfully. "They was here before you come. Your Nigger horse ain't takin' no dust. I reckon you didn't stop anywheres?"
"At the Bar B." Trevison made this admission with some embarrassment.
But Levins did not reproach him--he merely groaned, eloquently.
Trevison leaned against the opening of the chamber. His muscles ached; he was in the grip of a mighty weariness. Nature was protesting against the great strain that he had placed upon her. But his jaws set as he felt the flesh of his legs quivering; he grinned the derisive grin of the fighter whose will and courage outlast his physical strength. He felt a pulse of contempt for himself, and mingling with it was a strange elation--the thought that Rosalind Benham had strengthened his failing body, had provided it with the fuel necessary to keep it going for hours yet--as it must. He did not trust himself to yield to his passions as he stood there--that might have caused him to grow reckless. He permitted the weariness of his body to soothe his brain; over him stole a great calm. He assured himself that he could throw it off any time.
But he had deceived himself. Nature had almost reached the limit of effort, and the inevitable slow reaction was taking place. The tired body could be forced on for a while yet, obeying the lethargic impulses of an equally tired brain, but the break would come. At this moment he was oppressed with a sense of the unreality of it all. The pueblo seemed like an ancient city of his dreams; the adobe houses details of a weird phantasmagoria; his adventures of the past forty-eight hours a succession of wild imaginings which he now reviewed with a sort of detached interest, as though he had watched them from afar.
The moonlight shone on him; he heard Levins exclaim sharply: "Your arm's busted, ain't it?"