his knife and hack at the thing, regardless of its bristly defences, slashing until he laid bare its pulpy hearty scooping a sort of funnel in its pith in which its cool juice gathered.
They stayed there for two hours, eating the soft slices of the stuff, feeding Healy with bits of it, while the lopped cactus slowly wilted in the sun. It seemed to revive Healy more than it did them. It put some strength into his legs at last and, with them supporting him, careful of his frightful arm, which Stone had bandaged and slung with their bandanas, they made shift to totter on, a few paces at a time. The j nice had given them back for a wWle the power of speech but Stone and Larkin did not use it. They were listening to the babble of Healy with a seared intelligence that was barely able to store a memory for later comparison.
"We all lose," croaked Healy. "Stone and Larkin, damn 'em! They stood to lose all the time. But you lose, too, Castro, you sly, fat devil. You and me, we lose. The 'Paches coppered the bet. We saw the tracks of the devil—in the desert. He wins. Lyman's luck all the way."
The words came disjointedly, like beads from a broken necklace. But they were repeated over and over in little links of thought and sequence. And too tired for immediate significance, the effort keyed by the mention of Castro's name. Stone and Larkin tucked them away into their tired brains.
At four in the afternoon all three of them fell forward into the sand and did not rise again. In half an
