"Only stunned.... Mighty close, though," muttered Blake. He looked at the ashen face of the wounded man and added apprehensively, "Too close!... Concussion--" Hastily he knotted a compress bandage made of handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs around the bleeding head, and stretching Ashton flat on his back, began to pump his arms up and down as is done in resuscitating a drowned person. After a time Ashton's face began to lose its deathly pallor. His heart beat less feebly; he drew in a deep sighing breath, and stared up dazedly at Blake, with slowly returning consciousness. "I'll smoke all I please and when I please," he murmured in a supercilious drawl. Blake dashed his face with the cupful of water still left in the canteen. The wounded man flushed with quick anger and attempted to rise. "What--what you--How dare you?" he spluttered, only to sink back with a groan, "My head! O-o-oh! You've smashed my head!" "You're in luck that your head _wasn't_ smashed," replied Blake. "It was a bullet knocked you over." "Bullet?" echoed Ashton. "Yes. Scoundrel up on the hill tried to get us both." "Up on the hill?" Ashton twisted his head about, in alarm, to look at the hill crest. "But if he--He may shoot again." "Not this time. I went up for him. He went down faster, other side the hill. Saw him on the run. The sneaking--" Blake closed his lips on the word. After a moment his grimness relaxed. "Came back to start your funeral. Found you'd cheated the undertaker. How do you feel now?" "I believe I--" began Ashton, again trying to raise himself, only to sink back as before. "My head!--What makes me so weak?" "Don't worry," reassured Blake. "It's only a scalp wound. You are weak from the shock and a little loss of blood. I'll get you a drink from my can, and then tote you into camp. You'll be all right in a day or two." He fetched the can of water from his bag, which he had dropped beside the level. Ashton drank with the thirstiness of one who has lost blood. When at last his thirst was quenched, he glanced up at Blake with a look of half reluctant apology. "I said something about your striking me," he murmured. "I did not understand--did not realize I had been shot. You see, just before--" "That's all right," broke in Blake. "I owe you a bigger apology. Last evening, while you were out hunting, someone took a shot at me. It must have been this same sneaking skunk. I thought it was you." "You thought I could try to--to shoot you?" muttered Ashton. "Yes. There's the old matter of the bridge, and you seem to think I am responsible for what your father has done. But after you came in, I soon concluded that you had fired towards the camp unintentionally." "If you had asked," explained Ashton, "I was around at the far end of these hills, nearly two miles from the camp, when I shot at the wolf and the rifle went wrong."