“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 and his party were gone.  The beacon still blazed at the westward pass.  The twang of the guitar had ceased.  Silence reigned about the ranch.  Old Plummer with anxious face plodded slowly up and down the open space in front of the deserted bar.  Feeny, with three loaded carbines close at hand and his belt bristling with revolvers, was dividing his attention between the safe and the still sleeping troopers.  Every once in a while he would station the major at the safe, which had been hauled into the easternmost of the rooms that opened to the front instead of on the corral, and, revolver in hand, would patrol the premises, never failing to stop at a certain window behind which he believed Moreno to be lurking, to warn that impulsive Greaser not to show his head outside his room if he didn’t want it blown off his shoulders; never failing on his return to stir up both recumbent forms with angry foot, and then to shower in equal portions cold water and hot imprecations upon them.  To Pedro he had intrusted the duty of caring for the horses of his prostrate comrades.  Every faculty he possessed was on the alert, watching for the faintest sign of treachery or hostility from within, listening with dread but stern determination for the first sound of hoof-beats from without.  It must have been about ten o’clock when, leaving Mr. Dawes, the clerk, seated in the dark interior beside the safe, Feeny stepped forth to make another round, stopped to look at Mullan and his partner, now beginning to twitch uneasily and moan and toss in their drunken