He waited, made a guess at the location of the person who shouted, and turned that way, changing the reins from his right hand to his left and pulling his holstered six-shooter within easy reach of his hand. This was not the country, his was not the errand, for carelessness, and Lance was taking no risk. As he walked his eyes roved continually over the brown expanse of rocks and stunted juniper that formed the Lava Beds. Behind him came Sorry, his worn shoes slipping now and then on a smooth rock, his head bobbing patiently, close to Lance's shoulder. As so often happens, it was the horse that first discovered the object of their search. He pulled away from the direct line, looking and looking at what Lance, keen-eyed though he was, mistook for a black rock with a juniper bush growing beside it. Lance turned that way, focussed his glasses upon the object and saw what had happened. A horse had fallen with its rider, the two lying together, the man pinned under the horse. A black horse which he recognized, and a big, red-faced cowpuncher with gray eyes that did not twinkle. While Lance looked, the man lifted his head, seemed to be staring straight into Lance's face, opened his mouth and contorted his pain-racked face in a shout. It was strange to have the sound reach Lance's ears thinned and weakened by distance, while the glasses brought the injured man so close that he could see the wild look of entreaty in his eyes. Lance put up the glasses and began running, with Sorry stumbling and slipping behind him. "I been here since morning," the big cowpuncher chattered feverishly when Lance came up to him. "I'm fixed, all right! I was dozing and I didn't jump and he caught me when he fell. I guess his leg is broke, but so is mine, fur's that goes. I come down hard on a rock and I guess I broke some ribs or something. Hurt like hell for a few hours--it ain't so bad now. Look out when you go to make him git up--if he rolls on me it's all off. I guess it's all off, anyway, but I don't want to be squashed to death." Lance bit his lip. It was hard to hear the man talking, talking, in that rapid, headlong fashion, while his leg lay under the full weight of the black horse and the sun blazed on his uncovered head. It was hard to see his shirt all blood-soaked on the left side where he had fallen across an uptilted, thin-edged rock. The horse, too, was in sorry state. A weed-grown crevice had cheated him with its semblance to sound footing, and he lay with front leg broken, groaning a little now and then while the man talked and talked. And while he examined the two it seemed to Lance that Fate was pointing, and saying that here, too, was one of the inscrutable instruments by which he worked out the destinies of men. A slippery rock, a man riding that way half asleep--