rotectingly over the ravished
saddle-bags.

The pocket containing that precious envelope was slashed open. The
envelope and watch were gone. The record of the court in the other bag
was undisturbed.

And then as he bathed his comrade's head and stanched the blood and
strove to call him back to consciousness, Blake saw it all, or thought
he did, and gnashed his teeth in impotent wrath. He was tricked,
betrayed, yes, possibly ruined, all by a gang of miserable "greasers,"
through the medium of a pretty Mexican girl and his own wretched
imbecility. There was no name Blake didn't call himself. There was
nothing disreputable he did not not think of Sancho, but what could he
prove? Sancho was a heavy loser. Sancho's best mules and all his fine
horses, including the famous roan had been spirited away. The gang had
made a wreck of the bar and a puddle of his famous liquor. Manuel, his
brother, with his beloved wife and child, had fled in terror, said
Sancho, else would they now be here nursing the heroic officer who had
striven to defend them against such a rush of wretches. Blake drove him
away with imprecations, vowing that he, Sancho, was in collusion with
the gang, against which unmerited slur Sancho protested in sonorous
Spanish, and to prove his innocence pointed to his bespattered bar-room,
and as that failed to move the obdurate heart of the raging cavalryman,
went sorrowfully back to the dark ranch whence there suddenly arose a
sheet of flame and the cry that the villains had set fire to the corral
before they left. For half an hour the straw and hay made a fierce
blaze, and the troopers turned to and saved the ranch, as Sancho knew
they would, and the actual damage was but slight. Some day Sancho would
present a claim against the government for twenty times the amount and
get such portion of it as was not required by the local agent and
lobbying aids who rushed it through congress. Against Sancho there was
no proof whatever, and when Blake rode away at dawn to take the trail of
the robber band he had to invoke Sancho's assistance in looking after
his stricken friend. There were hours that day when Blake could almost
have blown his brains out. He, who prided himself on the field record he
was making, had been outwitted, tricked, utterly and ridiculously
fooled. By heaven! if horses could hold out those rascals should not go
unwhipped of justice! Bitter as was his cup the previous year, this was
bitterer still.

Not