oices, as more men came
running forth from the barracks to join the watchers on the parade.
"Signal fire, sure, and right up over the Bennett Ranch--where the
general was to-day!"

"My God, I wonder have they jumped it! Yonder comes the
corporal--back--running!"

Back, indeed, and running and straight for the doctor's, where he could
be heard banging at the open door. So away went the trumpeter, full
tilt for tidings, and others, impatient, followed. Instead of coming
back the trumpeter kept on, running still harder toward the brow of the
hill and the post of Number Four. It was the corporal who called to his
halting and anxious fellows:

"It's Bennett's Ranch! His dago's in with the news--mos' dead down
there on Number Four; says they've killed the whole family--'Patchie
Mohaves!"

There was awed silence one moment. Then a deep voice broke it, and all
eyes turned on the speaker. 'Tonio.

"Apache Mohave? No! _No!!_"

CHAPTER V.

Bennett's "dago," when halted by Number Four, was as limp a specimen of
humanity as that drowsy young trooper had seen in all his soldier days.
Bennett's dago was no stranger to the post, having occasionally come
thither on errands for his employer, and semi-occasionally appeared
without such semblance of authority, but, whether his mission was for
master or man, it had never hitherto failed to lead to the store and
monte. Small as was the garrison, and few as were the neighboring
ranches, there was generally business enough to support two card rooms,
one for officers and the "_gente fino_"--the trader, his partner, the
chief packer, forage master, and an occasional rancher or prospector;
the other, a big one, and often a riotous, for the soldiery, scouts,
packers and riffraff of the frontier, and for this establishment
Bennett's dago had an indescribable fascination. Here he had met and
differed with Munoz, the two coming to a knife duel, promptly
suppressed by the gun butts of the guard. None the less was Munoz
called into requisition as interpreter, for between peril, exhaustion
and defective English the "dago" could only splutter an unintelligible
jargon that might have been Sicilian, Maltese, or Calabrian, but could
not be Spanish. Bennett, it seems, had picked him up for dead on the
Verde road, early in the spring of the year, and Mrs. Bennett had
nursed the poor devil back to life. Then it turned out that he knew how
to cook. Later it transpired that he had been with a M