"Go away!" sobbed the prostrated man. "Go away! Take my pony--all! Only leave me!"
"If ever I saw a fellow plumb locoed!" muttered Gowan, half awe-struck.
"Maybe he'll come to his senses if we leave him," suggested Knowles. He took a step towards Ashton. "All right, son, we'll go. But we'll leave you half that veal, and we won't take your hawss. D'you want help in looking for your outfit?"
"Well, if you want to let the thieves get away with it, that's your own lookout. You'd better strike back to the railroad."
"Gone to smash--clean busted!" commented Gowan, as he turned about to go to his horse, his spurs jingling gayly.
Knowles followed him, shaking his head. The girl had been gazing at Ashton with an expression that varied from sympathetic commiseration to contemptuous pity. As her adopted father and Gowan mounted, she rode over to them.
"Go on," she said. "I'll overtake you as soon as I've watered my hawss."
"You're not going to speak to that kettle of mush again, Miss Chuckie," remonstrated Gowan.
"Yes, I am, Kid, and you know you wouldn't stop me if you could. He needs it. I'm glad you smashed his pistol. A rifle is not so handy."
Knowles stared over the bushes at the huddled figure on the ground. "Look here, Chuckie, you can't mean that?"
"Yes," she insisted. "He is ready to do it right now, unless someone throws him a rope and hauls him out of the slough."
"Lot of fuss over a tenderfoot you never saw before today," grumbled Gowan.
"That's not like you, Kid," she reproached. "Besides, you don't want the trouble of digging a grave. It would have to be deep, to keep out the coyotes. Daddy, you're forgetting the veal."
"So I am," agreed the cowman. "Ride on, Kid. You'll be carrying most weight."
The puncher reluctantly wheeled his horse and started down the bank of the dry stream. Knowles unfastened the hind quarters of veal from behind the cantle of his saddle, lifted them into a fork of one of the low trees, and rode off after Gowan, folding up his blood-stained slicker.
The girl at once slipped from her pony and walked quietly around to the drooping, despairing man.
"Mr. Ashton," she softly began, "they have gone. I have stayed to find out if there is anything I can do."