Payne looked at the man who had spoken, who remained seated. He looked at him steadily for a long while. Then he said: "My name is Payne. I guess you're Mr. Garman." XII "You're right." The seated man was nibbling a piece of venison on a broiling stick and did not look up. "I'm Garman." He finished the venison, wiped his drooping, fawn-colored mustache with a silk handkerchief, displaying as he did so the two large diamonds upon his fingers; and through his heavy, yellow eyebrows he looked up lazily. As he sat squatted there by the fire Garman's figure gave an impression of squatness and of grossness in proportions and flesh. The closely cropped head was of a size sufficient to dominate the huge body, and by the harsh salients of the jaws, the great forehead and the flat back head, gave evidence that but for its pink-fleshed rotundity the head might have appeared nearly square. The backs of the hands which drew the silk handkerchief delicately across the thick red lips beneath the drooping mustache were covered to the fingernails with a fell of thick yellow hair; only the fat white palms were bare, like the insides of a gorilla's paws. "Payne, eh?" said Garman with a flash of white teeth showing through the mustache. "Pretty fair-sized boy. About my size when I was eighteen." Higgins was turning Willy over on his back. "My God! Look at him!" he cried, pointing to the Indian's swollen face with its protruding tongue and popeyes. "They've choked the poor devil to death! You cheap, dirty greaser!" he roared, turning upon his aversion, Ramos. "There was a good boy, that Indian; and if you've done him dirt I'll beat your greasy head off with your left leg!" "Hold on, Hig!" Payne held his engineer back. "There's no sign of a hand on his throat." "But look at his face! Can't you tell by that?" Roger bent over the Indian and felt for a heartbeat. "He's alive!" "Is he?" laughed Garman. "That's important perhaps--to Willy." "Get some water, Hig. That's the stuff; souse him. Ah! Didn't he breathe?" "Tried to. Can't you pull his tongue down a little so he can git air?" "Get some more water! He's breathing!" "Hi, Willy!" cried Higgins, tilting the water against the distorted mouth. "Come to, old boy; come to!" A few drops of the cooling stuff trickled into the Indian's throat, stirring the spark of life that was beginning to glow again in him. A tremor convulsed his chest as the lungs sucked spasmodically at the tiny stream of air entering the swollen throat. A gurgle, a deep sigh, and Willy's unconscious body was taking in the life-giving air in short gulps. "By the great smoked fish, he'll make a live of it!" jubilated Higgins. "And the man who did it--don't care who he is--is one son of a she-skunk, net."