"_Señor!_" he cried ringingly from a distance. "_Señor Caballero!_ I tell you, they keel me! I got no chances! For sure, they keel me, robbers!"
Standing answered roughly: "And what do I care? Serve you right for the fool you are!"
"Now, he's here," said Winch. "Look here, Timber: you can take your time talking to him. Let me look you over. I want to see that second bullet hole."
"Winch, you idiot," Standing growled at him; "I got it close to a week ago. I've tended to it myself; it's all right. I don't look like a dying man, do I?"
"_Señor!_" Joe was crying, down on the ground now, tremendously excited.
"Are you usin' my salve?" demanded Winch. "Plenty of it, night and morning?"
"And you're out of it _now_!" With a triumphant flourish Winch dipped into a pocket and extracted a small package. "Here you are, Timber! And this is extra special! I got all the ingredients this time; tried it out day before yesterday on that new pinto pony you bought from Ferguson; got cut in the wire fence down by the pasture. Say, it works like magic...."
Standing groaned. "Winch, some fine day I'll carve you all up with a hand-axe, just to give you a chance to use your own filthy mess...."
"I wouldn't have been shy a leg, would I, if that fool doctor had had a pint of this?"
"_Señor!_" Joe was crying. "You got to listen; you got to hear what I goin' tell you! My gold, my gold that I find, me, myself, all alone...."
"What do I care for you or your gold!" cried Standing. "I don't need it, do I? I don't ask you anything about it, do I? I don't want to know anything about it! Go wallow in your gold and leave me alone!"
But Joe explained, growing vehement to the point of wildness; as Winch had put it, "he was clean crazy over the thing." How could Joe wallow in it, much as he would like to, when always there were men like ugly hounds on his trail? What chance had he, poor devil that he styled himself, against such men as Jim Taggart and Young Gallup and Cliff Shipton and Babe Deveril and Barny McCuin.... He named a score. At the name of Babe Deveril Standing's eyes flashed and sped to a meeting with Lynette's; into hers, too, came a quick light. Joe had caught Standing's interest.
"What about these men?" he asked. "What about Deveril?"