Cabot did not answer. The gasping horse on the sand, moving its neck in a weak attempt to get up, was answer enough. He stood with his hands hanging helplessly, looking at it in wrath and desperation. Landor took stock of the others. There had been five led horses twenty-four hours before, when they had started on a hot trail after the chief Cochise. But they had taken the places of five others that had dropped in their tracks to feed the vultures that followed always, flying above in the quivering blue. They were a sorry lot, the two score that remained. In the spring of '61, when the handful of frontier troops was pressed with enemies red and brown and white, the cavalry was not well mounted. Landor saw that his own horse was the best; and it bid very fair to play out soon enough. But until it should do so, his course was plain. He gathered his reins in his hands. "You can mount behind me, Cabot," he said. The man shook his head. It was bad enough that he had come down himself without bringing others down too. He tried to say so, but time was too good a thing to be wasted in argument, where an order would serve. There was a water hole to be reached somewhere to the southwest, over beyond the soft, dun hills, and it had to be reached soon. Minutes spelled death under that white hot sun. Landor changed from the friend to the officer, and Cabot threw himself across the narrow haunches that gave weakly under his weight. It went well enough for a time, and the hills seemed coming a little nearer, to be rougher on the surface. Then the double-loaded horse fagged. Cabot felt that it did, and grasped hard on the burning cantle as he made his resolve. When Landor used his spurs for the first time, he loosed his hold and dropped to the ground. Landor drew rein and turned upon him with oaths and a purpled face. "What the devil are you trying to do now?" he said. Cabot told him that he was preparing to remain where he was. His voice was firm and his lips were set under the sun-bleached yellow of his beard, but his face was gray, for all the tan. He lapsed into the speech of other days. "No use, Jack," he said; "it's worse than court-martial--what I've got to face here. Just leave me some water and rations, and you go on." Landor tried another way then, and leaned from his saddle in his earnestness. He put it in the light of a favor to himself. But Cabot's refusal was unanswerable. It was better one than two, he said, and no horse in the command could carry double. "I will try to reach the water hole. Leave a man there for me with a horse. If I don't--" he forced a laugh as he looked up at the buzzard which was dropping closer down above him. "You could take turns riding behind the men." "No," Cabot told him, "I couldn't--not without delaying you. The trail's too hot for that. If you'll put a fourth and last bullet into Cochise, the loss of a little thing like me won't matter much." He stopped short, and his chin dropped, weakly, undecided.