ing in his power to
save the girls. Most reluctantly he agreed that Feeny should remain in
charge of the safe and the two drugged and helpless men. Murphy and
all the others were ordered out forthwith to march rapidly
northeastward until they struck the trail of the pursuit and then to
follow that. In fifteen minutes, with four pack-mules ambling behind,
away they went into the darkness, and all that was left to man the
ranch and defend the government treasury against all comers was the
phlegmatic but determined paymaster, his physically wrecked but
devoted clerk, Sergeant Feeny, raging at heart but full of fight, and
a half-breed packer named Pedro; the two senseless and drunken
troopers were of course of no use to anybody.

Even as the detachment mounted, Latham with it, old Moreno appeared at
the door-way shrouded in his _serape_. Approaching Murphy by the side
farthest from Plummer and the sergeant, he slipped a fat canteen from
under his cloak and thrust it into the corporal's ready hand.

"Hush-h,--no words," he whispered. "All is well. I keep my promise."
And so saying he had slunk away; but Feeny was on the off side quick
as a shot, quicker than the corporal could stow the bulky vessel in
his saddle-bags. Wresting it from the nerveless hand of his junior,
Feeny hurled it with all his force after the Mexican's retreating
form. It struck Moreno square in the back of the neck and sent him
pitching heavily forward. Only by catching at a horse-post did he save
himself from a fall, but, as he straightened up, his face was one not
to be looked at without a shudder; grinding teeth, snapping, flashing
eyes, vengeful contortions of brow and jaw, hate, fury, and revenge,
all were quivering with the muscles under that swarthy skin, and the
gleaming knife was clasped in his upraised hand as, driving into the
ranch and out of sight of the hated "Gringos," he burst into the room
where sat his wife and daughter, and raging aloud, through that he
leaped like a panther to another door, fastened on the farther side,
where one instant he stood before admission could be gained, and
through a panel in which there warily peered a bearded face, swarthy
as his own. And then Senora Moreno hurriedly banged the shutter and
took up her guitar. Something had to be done to hush the uproar of
blasphemy and imprecation, mingling with the shout of exultation that
instantly followed her lord's admission to the den.

Nine o'clock came. Murphy a