was down against the hound pups that
would otherwise have had free entrance. Then Craney went to bed and
almost immediately to sleep, and heard nothing until after one o'clock,
when, with shocking news, men came banging at his double-locked and
bolted door.

Strong was one of the first to stir him, and Strong's face was white,
as well it might be. As the sentries began calling midnight he had left
Willett at the office, saying he must turn in for a few hours' rest.
Willett, seemingly in excellent spirits, had been writing a few pages
and addressing envelopes.

"I'll follow in twenty minutes or so," said he, "for I, too, need a
snooze. I'll be up as soon as I've finished a little business." Strong
had gone almost immediately to his pillow and to sleep, and was roused
by the corporal of the guard who had run in to call him with the news
that Lieutenant Willett had been shot dead.

At the moment of the shooting, so later said the guard, the waning
moon, only a dull crescent, was up far enough above the eastward
heights to throw a faint gleam over the valley. One of Turner's own men
was on post at the south-east corner, and his yell for the corporal,
instantly following the distant shot, was so excited and vehement that
the infantry non-commissioned officer, who went at a run, was minded to
rebuke him for raising such a row over a mere shooting scrape among the
Mexican packers. "Packers, your granny!" said Number Six. "It's
Lieutenant Willett that's shot, and I know it! He came down out of the
office not twenty minutes ago and went straight out south for Craney's
shack, and I'm betting he's done for."

And so indeed it looked when they found him but few minutes later--the
whole guard, save the relief on post, coming swift at the run to the
corporal's cry, and the garrison turning out, thinking sure it was
fire. Three hundred yards or so south and east of the shack they found
him lying flat on his face, which seemed forced into the soil,
senseless, and for the moment apparently dead. Even when they turned
him over and dashed water into his face, and brushed away the sand,
there was no sign of life, nor sign of shot wound. Not until the doctor
came on the run, urged by breathless messenger, was the tiny
bullet-hole found under the left armpit, and such blood as had escaped
seemed absorbed by the underwear. Internal hemorrhage was feared as
they unfastened his uniform and sought for further wound and found
none. Craney ba