So Charlie gave a sort of make-believe careless laugh, and obeyed the order of the guide. He even thrust his hands up higher than there was any real necessity for doing, as though he believed in going to the limit.
"Caught at last, and with the goods on, too!" he remarked, in his booming bass voice. "How are you, Eli? So, arter all I'm goin' to owe my bein' passed over to a feller I used to chum with. But we never did git on together, did we, Eli? Say, Kimball, show yourself here. Come out an' jine in the dance. Thet's the way it allers goes; when you think things are breaking your way, kerflop she goes into the soup. Tie me up, Eli, so I can't do any damage when my mad comes on, like it will when I gets to thinkin' o' how near I was to bein' fixed for life."
A face was seen in the doorway just then, a frightened face too. Thad swung his gun around, and covered Kimball, who immediately showed new signs of alarm.
"Don't fire, there!" he called out; "I'm all shot up as 'tis, an' losin' pints of blood at a two-forty rate. I surrender, all right! If Charlie, he gives in, there ain't no show for a wounded man like me holding out."
"Keep him covered, all the same, Thad, until we get this other one tied up," advised Allan, who possibly knew more about the type of rascal they were dealing with than any other among the scouts.
Eli did the job himself. And that he knew how to go about it in the right way Charlie himself testified in no uncertain tones.
"Reckon thet settles my hash, all right," he declared, as he surveyed the manner in which the stout cord was passed around his arms, so as to hold them behind his back when the guide wanted to complete the tying. "You'd do fur a sheriff, Eli Crookes. I s'pose this is jest what I ought to expect, after playin' the kind o' game I hev all these years; but I don't give up the ship while there's life. Mebbe so I kin git away yet."
That was possibly the only thing that had kept Charlie from putting up a desperate resistance when he found himself cornered. So long as there was life there was hope; whereas, if he tried to fight, and was shot to death, that ended it.
Then Thad had a chance to pay attention to Kimball. He saw that there was not the slightest chance for the wounded man to try and escape. He was really too weak to go far; and besides, that open cut did seem to be bleeding seriously.