Brand Blotters

He dropped on a knee beside the sprawling, huddled figure. No second

glance was needed to see that the man was dead. Life had been trampled out

of him almost instantly and his features battered beyond any possible

recognition. Unused to scenes of violence, the stranger stooping over him

felt suddenly sick. It made him shudder to remember that if he could have

found a way down in the darkness he, too, would have slept in the warm

sand of the dry wash. If he had, the fate of this man would have been

his.

Under the doubled body was a canteen. The trembling fingers of the

tenderfoot unscrewed the cork. Tipping the vessel, he drank avidly. One

swallow, a second, then a few trickling drops. The canteen had been almost

empty.

Uncovering, he stood bareheaded before the inert body and spoke gently in

the low, soft voice one instinctively uses in the presence of the dead.

"Friend, I couldn't save your life, but your water has saved mine, I

reckon. Anyhow, it gives me another chance to fight for it. I wish I could

do something for you ... carry a message to your folks and tell them how

it happened."

He dropped down again beside the dead man and rifled the pockets. In them

he found two letters addressed in an illiterate hand to James Diller,

Cananea, Sonora, Mexico. An idea flashed into his brain and for a moment

held him motionless while he worked it out. Why not? This man was about

his size, dressed much like him, and so mutilated that identification was

impossible.

From his own pocket he took a leather bill book and a monogrammed

cigarcase. With a sharp stone he scarred the former. The metal case he

crushed out of shape beneath the heel of his boot. Having first taken one

twenty dollar yellowback from the well-padded book, he slipped it and the

cigarcase into the inner coat pocket of the dead man. Irregularly in a

dozen places he gashed with his knife the derby hat he was wearing, ripped

the band half loose, dragged it in the dust, and jumped on it till the hat

was flat as a pancake. Finally he kicked it into the sand a dozen yards

away.

"The cattle would get it tangled in their hoofs and drag it that far with

them," he surmised.

The soft gray hat of the dead man he himself appropriated. Again he spoke

to the lifeless body, lowering his voice to a murmur.

"I reckon you wouldn't grudge me this if you knew. I'm up against it. If I

get out of these hills alive I'll be lucky. But if I do--well, it won't do

you any harm to be mistaken for me, and it will accommodate me mightily. I

hate to leave you here alone, but it's what I've got to do to save

myself."