ut say the Corporal Donovan is not come. How know I you go not out
to-night?"

"Neither you nor the likes of you knows," was Feeny's stern retort.
"We go when we will and no questions asked. As for you, Murphy, you be
ready, and it's me you'll ask, not any outsider, when we go. I've had
enough to swear at to-day without you fellows playing off on me. Go or
no go--no liquor, mind you. The first man I catch drinking I'll tie by
the thumbs to the back of the ambulance, and he'll foot it to
Stoneman."

No words were wasted in remonstrance or reply. These were indeed "the
days of the empire" in Arizona,--days soon after the great war of the
rebellion, when men drank and swore and fought and gambled in the
rough life of their exile, but obeyed, and obeyed without question,
the officers appointed over them. These were the days when veteran
sergeants like Feeny--men who had served under St. George Cooke and
Sumner and Harney on the wide frontier before the war, who had ridden
with the starry guidons in many a wild, whirling charge under Sheridan
and Merritt and Custer in the valley of Virginia--held almost despotic
powers among the troopers who spent that enlistment in the isolation
of Arizona. Rare were the cases when they abused their privilege.
Stern was their rule, rude their speech, but by officers and men alike
they were trusted and respected. As for Feeny, there were not lacking
those who declared him spoiled. Twice that day had the paymaster been
on the point of rebuking his apparent indifference. Twice had he
withheld his censure, knowing, after all, Feeny to be in the right and
himself in the wrong. And now in the gathering shades of night, as he
stood in silence watching the brisk process of grooming, and noted how
thorough and business-like, even though sharp and stern, was Feeny,
the paymaster was wishing he had not ventured to disregard the caution
of so skilled a veteran.

And yet the paymaster, having a human heart in his breast, had been
sorely tried, for the appeal that came for help was one he could not
well resist. Passing Ceralvo's at midnight and pushing relentlessly
ahead instead of halting there as the men had hoped, the party was
challenged in the Mexican tongue.

"_Que viene?_"

To which unlooked-for and uncalled-for demand the leading trooper,
scorning Greaser interference in American territory, promptly
answered,--

"Go to hell!"

All the same he heard the click of lock and was prompt to dr