to far south-east ran the
palisade-like crest of the Black Mesa, while the Sierra Ancha bound the
basin firmly at the southward side. Deep in the ravines of the
foothills, where little torrents frothed and tumbled in the spring
tide, scant, thread-like rivulets came trickling now to join the gentle
flood of the lower Tonto and the East Fork of the Verde, and, at one or
two points along the Mesa, signal smokes were still puffing into the
breathless air. Below them, possibly six miles away, yet looking almost
within long rifle-shot, the square outline of the abandoned corral, the
blackened ruin of the ranch, with the adjacent patches, irrigated,
tilled, carefully tended--all Bennett's hard and hopeful toil gone for
nothing--told their incontrovertible tale of savage hate and treachery.
It was a sorry ending this, a wretched reward for the years of saving,
self-denial and steadfast labor of him who had lived so long at amity
among these children of the mountain and desert, giving them often of
his food and raiment, asking only the right to build up a little lodge
in this waste land of the world, where he need owe no man anything, yet
have home and comfort and competence for those he loved, and a welcome
for the wayfarer who should seek shelter at his door. It was the old,
old story of many a pioneer and settler, worn so threadbare at the
campfires of the cavalry that rough troopers wondered why it was that
white men dared so much to win so little. Yet, through just such
hardships, loneliness and peril our West was won, and they who own it
now have little thought for those who gave it them.

Stannard sighed as he closed his signal glass and turned again to the
duty in hand. "What's the trouble?" he bluntly asked his faithful
sergeant; lieutenants at the moment he had none.

"Check, sir. All rock and half a dozen gullies. Scouts are trying three
of them. Don't seem to know which way they went from here. Even a mule
shoe makes no print."

The troop, following its leader's example, without sound or signal had
dismounted, and stood in long column of files adown the ravine. 'Tonio
and his fellow-scouts had disappeared somewhere in the stony labyrinth
ahead. Up this way, before the dawn, the dusky band must have led or
driven their captives, two of Bennett's mules having been pressed into
service. Up this way, not an hour behind them, must have followed
Harris and his handful of allies, four Indians in all. Up this way,
swift