The Rebel Chief by Gustave Aimard

Dominique marched very gently, supporting with a firm hand the wounded man seated in his saddle, watching over him as a mother watches over her child, having only one desire -- that of reaching the rancho as soon as possible, in order to give this stranger, who, without him, would have died so miserably, that attention which the precarious state in which he still was, necessitated.

In spite of the impatience he felt, it was unfortunately impossible to hurry his horse on for fear of an accident across the broken and almost impracticable roads he was compelled to follow: hence it was with an indescribable feeling of pleasure that, in coming within two or three gunshots of the rancho, he noticed some persons running towards him. Though he did not recognize them at first, his joy was great, for it was help arriving for him; and though he would assuredly have been unwilling to allow it, he recognized its extreme necessity for himself, and especially for the wounded man, as for some hours he had been stumbling along tracks nearly always impracticable, constrained to keep a constant watch on this man, whom, by an incomprehensible miracle, he had saved from a certain death, and whom the slightest neglect might kill.