"'It's the spring west that is poisoned. I put it there for you. You will not see your men again. They will drink and die. Who put this poison here?' "'Lord knows. I didn't,' I told him. 'Two of you carrying poison are two too many for the Cimarron country.' "And I hadn't any more conscience after that, but I was faint and slow, and my aim was bad for eels. He could have fixed me right then, but for some reason he didn't." Beverly's face grew sad. "He made six jumps six ways, and caught my pony's lariat. I can hear his yell still as he tore a hole in the horizon and jumped right through. Then I began on that spring. 'Dig or die. Dig or die.' I said over and over, and we are all here but Bill. I wish I'd got that Apache, though." Jondo and I looked at each other. "The thing is clear now," he said, aside to me. "That single trail I found back yonder day before yesterday was Santan's running on ahead of us to poison the water for us and then steal a horse and make his way back to the mountains. An Apache can live on this cactus-covered sand the same as a rattlesnake. He fixed the upper spring and came down here to drink. Only Beverly's conscience saved him here. Heaven knows how Fred Ramer got out here. He may have come with some Mexicans on ahead of us and left them here to drop his poison in this lower spring. Then he turned back toward Santa Fé and found his doom up there at Santan's spring. "I'm like Bev. I wish he had gotten the Apache, now. I don't know yet how I was fooled in him, for he has always been Fred Ramer's tool, and Father Josef never trusted him. And to think that Bill Banney, in no way touching any of our lives, should have been martyred by the crimes of Fred and this Apache! But that's the old, old story of the trail. Poor Bill! I hope his sleep will be sweet out in this desolate land. We'll meet him later somewhere." The winds must have carried the tale of poisoned water across the Cimarron country, for the Comanches' trail left ours from that day. Through threescore and ten miles to the Arkansas River we came, and there was not a well nor spring nor sign of water in all that distance. What water we had we carried with us from the Cimarron fountains. But the sturdy endurance of the days was not without its help to me. And the wide, wind-swept prairies of Kansas taught me many things. In the lonely, beautiful land, through long bright days and starlit nights, I began to see things bigger than my own selfish measure had reckoned. I thought of Esmond Clarenden and his large scheme of business; Felix Narveo, the true-hearted friend; and of Father Josef and his life of devotion. And I lived with Jondo every day. I could not forget the hour in the little ruined chapel in the San Christobal Valley, and how he himself had made no effort to clear his own name. But I remembered, too, that Father Josef, mercilessly just to Ferdinand Ramero, had not even asked Jondo to defend himself from the black charge against him.