d until he regained the road, his scouts following
pell-mell, and in ten minutes more they found him bending over the
lifeless body of brave, sturdy Jack Bennett, weltering in his blood at
the side of the spring house, and with no sign of the hapless, helpless
wife and mother anywhere.

"By God, Hal Willett!" cried Harris, as he sprang to his feet, all
dignity and deliberation thrown to the winds. "You may 'proceed with
caution' all you damned please. 'Tonio and I go after that poor woman
and her children. We'd have saved them _here_ if it hadn't been for
you!"

CHAPTER VII.

The dawn was breaking in sickly pallor over the jagged scarp of the
Mesa, bounding the chaotic labyrinth of bowlders, crag and canon
beneath. Far up the rugged valley, jutting from the faded fringe of
pine, juniper and scrub oak that bearded the Mogollon, a solitary butte
stood like sentry against the cloudless sky, its lofty crown of rock
just faintly signalling the still distant coming of the heralds of the
god of day. Here in the gloomy depths of the basin, and at the banks of
the murmuring stream, all was still silence and despond. The
smouldering ruins of Bennett's cosey home lay a mass of dull red coal,
with smoke wreaths sailing idly aloft from charred beam or roof-tree.
The mangled body of the stout frontiersman had been gathered into a
trooper's blanket and lay there near the pathetic ruin of the house he
had so hopefully builded, so bravely defended, for the wife and little
ones. Half a dozen Indian scouts, silent and dejected, were squatting
inert about the little garden, irrigated from the main _acequia_,
where the heavy-headed poppies, many of them, were still nodding on
their stalks, while others lay crushed and trampled. A little distance
away down the stream a little troop of cavalry, in most business-like
uniform, had dismounted and was watering some fifty thirsty horses,
while its stocky commander, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his
riding breeches, his slouch hat pulled down to his brows, his booted
foot kicking viciously at a clump of cactus, was listening impatiently
to the words of the young aide-de-camp, who seemed far less at ease
than when he trod the boards of the general's quarters some six hours
earlier in the night.

"Do I understand you then," and Stannard spoke with a certain asperity,
"that Mr. Harris, with just two or three scouts, has gone out hunting
on his own hook?--that even 'Tonio isn't w