peaking for the first time impetuously.
"If you can't stand the pace let us shove ahead!"

"And run slap into ambush? No. My orders are to move with caution.
We've got to _feel_ our way now. Hold your hand, Harris--and your men."

Barely fifty minutes had they been in coming these six miles from Almy.
Barely fifty minutes thereafter, and with less than three miles more to
their credit, halted for cautious reconnaissance, with the ruined ranch
still a long mile away, there came sound of feeble hail from a patch of
willows down by the brookside, and presently, in fearful plight, they
dragged forth Bennett's colored man-of-all-work, unharmed, but half
dead with terror. Yes, Indians had suddenly come in the early evening.
First warning was from the Maricopa boy who came running from the
spring, saying they had killed his brother. Bennett grabbed his gun and
ran out to see, telling him, Rusty, to take a rifle and hurry with Mrs.
Bennett and the children and hide in the willows down the creek. They
heard firing and yelling, and 'twas all Rusty could do, he said, to
keep Mrs. Bennett from running back to her husband, and the children
from screaming aloud, but he made them go with him still farther down
the valley, down to that patch yonder, and there they lay in hiding
while the Indians burned the ranch, and seemed hunting everywhere for
them, and at last things quieted down, but Mrs. Bennett was wild and
crazy and crying to go back and find her husband, dead or alive, and he
had to hold her. Just a few minutes ago, not fifteen minutes before,
she broke away, and he found it was no use trying. She started to run
back, telling him to save her boys. She kissed them both and went, and
it wasn't five minutes after that before he heard her scream awfully,
and the boys began to cry again, and then--then he saw two Indians
coming running, and he knew they'd got her and were coming for the
children, so what could he do but run and save himself?

"Lead on where you left them!" ordered Harris instantly, never waiting
for Willett to speak. Ten minutes brought them to the farther shelter,
a dense little willow copse, empty and deserted. "Come on to the
ranch," was the next order, but there Willett interposed.

"Carefully now. Let your scouts open out and feel the way," he ordered,
and Harris would not hear. Harris had thrown himself from his horse to
lead the search. He never stopped to remount. He ran like a deer up the
stony creek be