“W-e-ll,” he finally drawled, “you understood I wanted to get on to Camp Stoneman by sunrise, didn’t you?  Didn’t my clerk, Mr. Dawes, tell you?”

“He did, yes, sir, and you don’t want to get there no more than I do, major.  But I told you flat-footed if you let Donovan and those other men go back on the trail they’d find some excuse to stop at Ceralvo’s, and, damn ’em, they’ve done it.”

“Don’t you s’pose they’ll be along presently?”

“S’pose?” and the sun-blistered face of the cavalryman seemed to grow a shade redder as he echoed almost contemptuously the word of his superior.  “S’pose?  Why, major, look here!” And the short, swart trooper took three quick strides, then pointed through the western gap in the adobe wall to the gilded edge of the range where the sun had just slipped from view.  “It’s ten mile to that ridge, it’s ten minutes since I got the last wig-wag of the signal-flag at the pass.  They hadn’t come through then.  What chance is there of their getting here in time to light out at dark?  You did tell me to have everything ready to start, and then you undid it by sending half the escort back.  You’ve been here in hell’s half-acre three days and I’ve been here three years.  You’ve never been through Canon Diablo; I’ve been through a dozen times and never yet without a fight or a mighty good chance of one.  Now you may think it’s fun to run your head into an ambuscade, but I don’t.  You can get ’em too easy without trying here.  I’m an old soldier, major, and too free spoken, perhaps, but I mean no disrespect, only I wish to God you’d listen to me next time.”

“You wouldn’t have had me leave those women in the lurch back at the crossing, would you?” queried the paymaster, half apologetically.

“Why, I don’t believe that story at all,” flatly answered Feeny; “it’s some damned plant that fellow Donovan’s springing on you,—­a mere excuse to ride back so they could drink and gamble with those thugs at Ceralvo’s.  They’ve just been paid off and had no chance for any fun at all before they were ordered out on this escort duty.  That money’s been burning in their pockets now for three whole nights, and they just can’t stand it so long as a drop of liquor’s to be had by hard riding.  No soldier is happy till he’s dead broke, major, leastwise none I ever see.”

“What makes you doubt the story, sergeant?  It came straight enough.”

“It came too damned straight, sir; that’s just the trouble.  It came straight from Chihuahua Pete’s monte mill.  It’s only a hook to draw ’em back, and they played it on you because they saw you were new to the country and they knew I was asleep; and now, unless Lieutenant Drummond should happen in with his troop, there’s no help for it but to wait for to-morrow night, and no certainty of getting away then.”

“Well, if Mr. Drummond were here, don’t you suppose he’d have gone or sent back to protect those people?”