f getting away then."

"Well, if Mr. Drummond were here, don't you suppose he'd have gone or
sent back to protect those people?"

"Oh, he'd have gone,--certainly,--that's his business, but it isn't
yours, major. You've got government money there enough to buy up every
rum-hole south of the Gila. You're expected to pay at Stoneman, Grant
and Goodwin and Crittenden and Bowie, where they haven't had a cent
since last Christmas and here it is the middle of May. You ought to
have pushed through with all speed, so none of these jay-hawkers could
get wind of your going, let alone the Apaches. Every hour you halt is
clear gain to them, and here you've simply got to stay twenty-four
hours all along of a cock-and-bull story about some stage-load of
frightened women fifteen miles back at Gila Bend. It's a plant, major,
that's what I believe."

Old Plummer kicked the toe of his shoe into the sandy soil and hung a
reflective head. "I wish you hadn't shut your eyes," he drawled at
length.

"I wouldn't, sir, if I hadn't thought you'd keep yours open. You slept
all night, sir, you and Mr. Dawes, while I rode alongside with finger
on trigger every minute."

Absorbed in their gloomy conversation, neither man noticed that the
wooden shutter in the adobe wall close at hand had been noiselessly
opened from within, just an inch or two. Neither knew, neither could
see that behind it, in the gathering darkness of the short summer
evening, a shadowy form was crouching.

"Then you think we must stay here, do you?" queried the paymaster.

"Think? I know it. Why, the range ahead is alive with Apaches, and we
can't stand 'em off with only half a dozen men. Your clerk's no
'count, major."

Old Plummer stood irresolute. His clerk, a consumptive and broken-down
relative, was at that moment lying nerveless on a rude bunk within the
ranch, bemoaning the fate that had impelled him to seek Arizona in
search of health. He was indeed of little "'count," as the paymaster
well knew. After a moment's painful thought the words rose slowly to
his lips.

"Well, perhaps you know best, so here we stay till to-morrow night, or
at least until they get back."

One could almost hear the whisper in the deep recess of the retaining
wall,--sibilant, gasping. Some one crouching still farther back in the
black depths of the interior _did_ hear.

"_Santa Maria!_"

But when a moment later the proprietor of this roadside ranch, this
artificial oasis in a land