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Not one glimpse of the truth as to Ezram's real reason for desiring to push on alone as much as occurred to him. Ezram was wholly deliberate. He knew what waited him on arrival at his brother's claim. Jeffery Neilson and his gang had assembled there, had already jumped the claim just as his brother had warned him that they would do; and coolly and quietly he had resolved to face them alone.
Ezram's first knowledge of it was a wild yell that almost startled him over the side the same violent outcry that old anglers still can not restrain when the fish takes hold, even after a lifetime of angling. When he recovered himself he looked to see Ben kneeling frantically in the stern, hanging for dear life to his rod and seemingly in grave danger of being pulled overboard.
"Say, partners you don't want to sell your boat, do you?" Ben started to speak, but the doubtful look on Ezram's face checked him. "Oh, I don't know," the old man replied, in the discouraging tones of a born tradesman. In reality the old Shylock's heart was leaping gayly in his breast. This was almost too good to be true: a purchaser for the boat in the first hour. "Yet we might," he went on.
"There is nothing I can do, now. You came too late. But I would have had something to do if I had my rifle. I'm glad it was you, not Beatrice's father. I ask you this will you accept my proposition. To take Ezram's letter, destroy it and me too and let the girl go in safety?" Beatrice stretched her bound arms and touched his hairy wrist. "No, Ben," she told him quietly.
Before we go any further, tell me what service I've done you, what obligation you're under to me, that gives me a right to accept so much from you?" It might have been in the moonlight that Ezram's eyes glittered perceptibly. "You're in my charge," he grinned. "I guess you ain't got any say comin'." "Wait wait." Ben sprang to his feet, and caught by his earnestness, Ezram got up too.
Go quick brother Ez and put up a stone for me at Snowy Gulch. Your brother There was a long pause after Ezram's voice had died away. Ben's eyes glowed in the moonlight. "And you haven't heard whether your brother is still alive?" "I got a wire the hotel man sent me. It reached me weeks before the letter came, and I guess he must have died soon after he wrote it.
He arose, wholly self-mastered, and with hard, strong hands made a detailed examination of Ezram's wound. He had evidently been shot by a rifle of large caliber, probably at close range. Ezram's own gun lay at his feet, loaded but not cocked. "They shot you down in cold blood, old boy, didn't they?" he found himself asking. "You didn't have a chance!"
From this point his mind naturally fell to Ezram's parting advice to him. "I've only got one decent place to keep things safe, and that ain't so all-fired decent," the old man had told him. "I always put 'em down my bootleg, between the sock and the leather. If I ever get shuffled off, all of a sudden, I want you to look there careful."
One of them could hurry on, unimpeded by the pack animals, and the other must linger to secure their supplies; and there could really be no question, in Ezram's mind, which should go and which should stay. He had known perfectly that if Ben had realized the true need for haste, he would never have submitted so tamely to Ezram's will. The old man knew Wolf Darby.
The blow was ever so much more cruel on Ezram's account than his own. Ben could picture his downcast face, trying yet to smile; his sobered eyes that he would try to keep bright. But there would be certain planning, when they met again over their camp fire. And there were three of them allied now. Fenris the wolf had come into his service.
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