Patsy.
Sure he was one of the nerviest men in the whole troop, sir."

Drummond listened, every nerve a-tingle, even while with hurried hands
he cut open the shirt at the brawny throat and felt for fluttering
heart-beat or faintest sign of life. Useless. The shot-hole under the
left eye told plainly that the leaden missile had torn its way through
the brain and that death must have been instantaneous. The soldier's
arms and accoutrements, the horse's equipments, were gone. The bodies
lay unmutilated. The story was plain. Separated in some way from the
detachment, Donovan and his companion had probably sighted the signal
blazing at the pass and come riding hard to reach the spot, when the
unseen foe crouching across their path had suddenly fired the fatal
shots. Now, where was the paymaster? Where the escort? Where the men
who fed the signal-fire,--the fire that long before midnight had died
utterly away. Whither should the weary detachment direct its march?
Ceralvo's lay a dozen miles off to the northwest, Moreno's perhaps
eight or nine to the southeast. Why had the escaped trooper headed his
fleeing steed in that direction? Had there been pursuit? Ay, ten
minutes' search over the still and desolate plain revealed the fact
that two horsemen lurking in a sand-pit or dry arroyo had pushed forth
at top speed and ridden away full tilt across the desert, straight as
the crow flies, towards Moreno's well. Even while Drummond, holding
brief consultation with his sergeant, was deliberating whether to
turn thither or to push for the signal-peak and learn what he could
from the little squad of blue jackets there on duty, the matter was
decided for him. Sudden and shrill there came the cry from the
outskirts of the now dismounted troop clustered about the body of
their comrade.

"Another fire, lieutenant! Look!--out here towards the Santa Maria."

The sergeant sprang to his feet, shouldering his burly way through the
excited throng. One moment more and his voice was heard in louder,
fiercer tones.

"No signal this time, sir. By God! they've fired Moreno's ranch!"

III.

Shortly after sunset on this same hot evening the sergeant in charge
of the little signal-party at the Picacho came strolling forth from
his tent puffing at a battered brier-root pipe. Southward and a few
hundred feet below his perch the Yuma road came twisting through the
pass, and then disappeared in the gathering darkness across the desert
plain