"Down there," beside the little spring shelved in by shale at the lower edge of the swell, we found a tiny cairn built of clumps of sod and bits of shale. Fastened on it was a scrap from Bill's note-book with the words Spring poisoned. Bev gone for water not very far on.--BILL. So Bill had drunk the poisoned water and had tried to reach us. But for fear he might not do it, he had scrawled this warning and left it here. Brave Bill! How madly he had staggered round the place and threshed the ground in agony when he tried to mount his poisoned pony, and his first thought was for us. The plains made men see big. Jondo had told me they could do it. Poor Bill, moaning for water now and tossing in agony in Jondo's wagon! The Comanches had been cunning in their malice. How we hated them as we stood looking at the waters of that poisoned spring! Rex Krane's big, gentle hands were holding Bill's. Rex always had a mother's heart; while Jondo read the ground with searching glance. "We will wait here a little while. Bev will report soon, I hope. Come, Gail," he said to me. "Here is something we will follow now." A single trail led far away from the beaten road toward a stretch of coarse dry yucca and loco-weeds that hid a little steep-sided draw across the plains. At the bottom of it a man lay face downward beside a dead pony. We scrambled down, shattering the dry earth after us as we went. Jondo gently lifted the body and turned it face upward. It was Ferdinand Ramero. The big plainsman did not cry out, nor drop his hold, but his face turned gray, and only the dying man saw the look in the blue eyes gazing into his. Ramero tried to draw away, fear, and hate, and the old dominant will that ruled his life, strong still in death. As he lay at the feet of the man whose life hopes he had blasted, he expected no mercy and asked for none. "You have me at last. I didn't put the poison in that spring. I would not have drunk it if I had. It was the one below I fixed for you. And I'm in your power now. Be quick about it." For one long minute Jondo looked down at his enemy. Then he lifted his eyes to mine with the victory of "him that overcometh" shining in their blue depths. "If I could make you live, I'd do it, Fred. If you have any word to say, be quick about it now. Your time is short." The sweetness of that gentle voice I hear sometimes to-day in the low notes of song-birds, and the gentle swish of refreshing summer showers. Ferdinand Ramero lifted his cold blue eyes and looked at the man bending over him. "Leave me here--forgotten--" "Not of God. His Mercy endureth forever," Jondo replied. But there was no repentance, no softening of the hard, imperious heart. We left him there, pulling down the loose earth from the steep sides of the draw to cover him from all the frowning elements of the plains. And when we went back to the waiting train Jondo reported, grimly: "_No enemy in sight."_