d bewildered faculties and bring him face to face with the
horror of the situation. Barely able to breathe, he found himself
rudely gagged. Striving to raise his hand to tear the hateful bandage
away, he found that he was pinioned by the elbows and bound hand and
foot by the very _riata_, probably, that had dragged him thither. No
doubt as to the nationality of his unseen captors here. The skill with
which he had been looped, tripped, whisked away, and bound,--the
sharp, biting edges, even the odor of dirty rawhide rope,--all told
him that though Americans were not lacking in the gang, his immediate
antagonists hailed from across the Sonora line. Who and what they were
mattered little, however. The fact that after hours of repulse in open
attack, the foe had all on a sudden carried their castle by a damnable
ruse was only too forcibly apparent. Writhing, struggling in
miserable effort to free himself from his bonds, poor Harvey's burning
eyes were maddened by the picture before him only a couple of hundred
yards away. There in the fierce light of the flames now bursting from
every window and roaring and shooting high in air from the
brush-heaped roof of Moreno's ranch,--there stood the Concord wagon,
stalwart men clinging to the heads of the plunging and excited mules,
a big ruffian already in the driver's seat, whip and reins in hand;
there beside it was the paymaster's ambulance, into which three of the
gang were just shoving the green-painted iron safe,--the Pandora's box
that had caused all their sorrows; there Moreno's California
buck-board, pressed into service and being used to carry the wounded,
drawn by the extra mules; and then--God of heaven! what a sight for
brother's eyes to see and make no sign!--then one big brute lifted
from the ground and handed up to a fellow already ensconced within the
covered wagon the senseless, perhaps lifeless, form of pretty little
Ruth, his father's idol. The poor child lay unresisting in the
ruffian's arms, but not so Paquita. It took two men, strong and burly,
to lift and force her into the dark interior, and one of those, to the
uttermost detail of his equipment, was to all appearance a trooper of
the United States cavalry. There stood his panting horse with hanging
head and jaded withers, the very steed whose rush they had welcomed
with such exceeding joy, saddled, bridled, blanketed, saddle-bagged,
lariated, side-lined, every item complete and exactly as issued by the
Ordna