er ranch," by declaring that a shop that held Sancho and Pedro and
didn't have game was unworthy of patronage. Sancho had additional
reasons for disapproving of Blake. That fine binocular, to begin with,
bore the brand of Uncle Sam, for which reason it was never in evidence
when an officer or soldier happened along. It had been abstracted from
Blake's signal kit, when he was scouting the Dragoon Mountains, and
swapped for the vilest liquor under the sun, at Sancho's, of course, and
the value of the glass, not of the whisky, was stopped against the long
lieutenant's pay, leaving him, as he ruefully put it, "short enough at
the end of the month." Somebody told Blake he would find his binocular
at Sancho's, and Blake instituted inquiries after his own peculiar
fashion the very next time he happened along that way.

"Here, you Castilian castaway," said he, as he alighted at Sancho's
door, "I am told you have stolen property in the shape of my signal
glass. Hand it over instanter!"

And Sancho, bowing with the grace of a grandee of Spain, had assured the
Senor Teniente that everything within his gates was at his service,
without money and without price, had promptly fetched from an adjoining
room a battered old double-barreled lorgnette, that looked as though it
might have been dropped in the desert by Kearny or Fauntleroy, or some
of the dragoons who made the burning march before the Gadsden purchase
of 1853 made us possessors of more desert sand and desolate range than
we have ever known what to do with.

"This thing came out of the ark," said Blake, rightfully wrathful. "What
I want is the signal glass that deserter sold you for whisky last
Christmas."

Whereat Sancho called on all the saints in the Spanish calendar to bear
witness to his innocence, and bade the teniente search the premises.

"He's got it in that bedroom yonder," whispered old Sergeant Feeney,
"and I know it, sir."

And Blake, striding to the door in response to the half-challenge,
half-invitation of the gravely courteous cutthroat owner, stopped short
at the threshold, stared, whipped off his scouting hat, and, bowing low,
said: "I beg your pardon, senora, senorita; I did not know--" and
retired in much disorder.

"Why didn't you tell me your family had come, you disreputable old rip?"
demanded he, two minutes later, "or is that too--stolen property?"

"It is the wife of my brother and his daughter," responded the ranchman
with unruffled suavity