“Look heah, Jim, right through the heart; you can see where his shirt's all bloody. Me and you have seen enough of cholera to know that ain't the way it takes a man.” The stick was used again. “This heah consumptive looking chap's all shot to pieces; whoever done it made a sieve out of him.” He gained the ditch bank. “I wish I had a good drink of licker right now,” said Jim weakly. “Same here,” echoed the Missourian. “Well,” said he, after a moment's reflection, “it ain't a job I hanker for, but I'm going through their pockets. I am going to see who they was and where they come from. You go fetch that pick and shovel; we'll be ready for them in a minute.” But he was white faced and shaking when his fruitless search was finished. He had found nothing that served to throw any light on the identity of the dead men. “There ain't the scratch of a pen about any of them; no letters—no papers—no nothing. Somebody's been ahead of me.” “I wouldn't have did what you just done for five hundred dollars!” declared Jim. “I wouldn't either—for the money,” said the Missourian. “Give me the pick.” The two men attacked the bank with feverish energy and their task was soon finished; then the Missourian said: “Now we'll just take one more look about among those cinders and then we'll get away from heah just as fast as the Lord will let us. I seen places I liked a heap better.” But the search revealed nothing new. “Who do you allow done it? Indians?” asked Jim, as they hurried away in the direction their mules had taken. “Who else would it be?” “No one else, judging from the way they'd been used. They—” “Shut up!” cried the Missourian with sudden fierceness, “I ain't likely to forget how they was used! Good God! That's going to stick in my crop to the end of my days, I reckon—don't you rub it in!” “Well, you done what was white!” said Jim, with unexpected and generous enthusiasm. But for the rest of that day and far into the night, they could talk and think of nothing else than those dead men in the ditch. CHAPTER NINETEEN THE Missourian and Jim camped on the edge of the timber. So little of the day was remaining to them after they left the hill that they had been forced to stop here; but they were in the saddle again with the first pale glimmer of light that shot across the plain. “We'll tuck along out of heah in pretty considerable of a hurry, Jim,” said the Missourian. They crossed the narrow bottom and entered the mountains; but before these quite closed about them, moved by common impulse, they turned for a last look at the hill. “I certainly am proud to see the end of that!” observed the Missourian as he faced ahead once more. “You bet I wouldn't care to loaf around there none; most any place'd suit me better,” and Jim took a long, deep breath.