"Down there things seemed to swim around
me like water everywhere and I knew I'd got to stir. Just then an Indian
came slipping up from somewhere to the spring to drink. He didn't look
right to me at all, but I couldn't sit still and see him kill himself.
If he needed killing I could have done it for him, for he never saw me.
Just as he stooped I saw his face. It was that Apache--Santan--the
wander-foot, for I never heard of an Apache getting so far from the
mountains. I ought to have kept still, Jondo"--Beverly's ready smile
came to his face--"but I'd made that fellow swear he'd let me eternally
alone when we had our little fracas up by the San Christobal Arroyo, so
something like conscience, mean as the stomach-ache, made me call out:
"'Don't drink there; it's poison.'
"He stopped and stared at me a minute, or ten minutes--I didn't count
time on him--and then he said, slow-like:
"'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.
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