Page:Allan Dunn--Dead Man's Gold.djvu/173

Rh The girl nodded and gave the engine more gas.

"They're thar," said Harvey, pointing ahead to a black mass. "Them's buzzards, a swarm of 'em! They've lit but they ain't started ter—ter clean up. Thar's some life left in 'em yet, by the Lord!"

He let out a loud "whoopee!" and fired his pistol into the air as the little car hopped and slid and bounded across the desert to where the great birds, their numbers augmented to a score, reluctantly mounted, clumsy of wing until they were fairly launched, and then wheeling above the machine resentfully with raucous cries.

Water, the want of which had so swiftly reduced them to their extremity, was as swift to bring them back, judiciously applied by Harvey. The girl gave out little moans of pity as she aided. All three were unconscious and their faces were bloated and broken and black with caked sweat and blood. Healy's arm looked almost as large as his thigh.

"Thet Doctor Seward of yore's a surgeon?" asked Harvey. "If he ain't we better run down to Camp Verde with Healy here, thet is if we ain't puttin' ye out too much?"

"Putting me out?" she echoed, scornfully. "You help me get them into the car. No, you can't have any more water," she said to Lefty Larkin whose eyes had opened and whose lips formed the word they could not utter. "Not now. Yes, Doctor Seward was a surgeon before he became a specialist in tuberculosis. That arm is horrible but if any one can save it, he can. What is it, a snake bite?"