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Show 192 WESTERN WILDS. " Bring me some water,. Bob, and listen to the few words 1 can speak." Refreshed by the draught, he went on : " Do you love me, Bob?" The stalwart, unwouuded man sobbed like a child. " Would you do me the greatest favor man can do another? Would you hurt your own heart for meV Would you save me days, arid nights of misery? ' Cause, if you would, Bob, there's jist one thing for you to do." And he laid his hand upon the pistol in Bob's belt. " Oh, don't say that, Bill. For the Lord's own sweet sake, don't say that. Any thing else. I'll start now and bring help." " Help! " said Will, with the faintest touch of sarcasm in his falter-ing tones; " help; the nearest white man's three hundred miles away, and where ' d I be by the time ye got back ? Don't ye see I can't live?" " But I will get the ax and chop the log off ye; I'll get ye out." " No use, Bob, no use. It's only a matter of how and when I'll go under. Can't you see I'm rubbed out ? I've pinked my last buff'ler I've set the last trap in this world. Would you let me lay here days and days and suffer ten thousand deaths ? No, Bob, do as I bid ye. Don't be chicken- hearted. Jest one ball from that pistol and right in the head, Bob, right in the head. Oh, dear boy, why won't you help me?" The uninjured brother sank trembling on the ground; clasped Will around the neck, and with strong, crying tears begged the sufferer to spare him this. " Brother," said the wounded man, a strange, tremulous sweetness in his voice, " do you mind the days when we played among the lime-stone hills in old Kaintuck and what our grandfather McAfee told us about the Injun troubles when he was young an' the kind o' blood there was in our family? Do ye mind it, Bob? Ain't the blood there yit ? I ain't afeared to die, but think o' layin' here, or anywhere else, an' dyin' by inches! I'm right in the head now soon I'll be in a fever, an' then but you'll help me out, Bob, won't you? No one will ever blame ye. I ask it ; I, your brother, beg it of ye the last favor ye can do me." And he struggled to raise the pistol with his own hands, then sank back exhausted, his gaze turned imploringly to his brother. ####**### The awful confeVence was over, and the deed was done. Will McAfee lay dead with a ball in his brain, sent there by his broth- |