When he returned he croaked out, with an unusual air of excitement, “Big thing!”

“What is a pig ding?” inquired Sergeant Meyer.

“Never see Injuns make such a fight afore.”

“Nor I,” assented Meyer.

“Stranger, they fowt first-rate,” affirmed Smith, half admiring the Apaches.  “How many did we save?”

“Here are vour in our room, und the leftenant says there are three on the roof, und berhabs we killed vour or vive outside.”

“A dozen!” chuckled Texas, “besides the wounded.  Let’s hev a look at the dead uns.”

Going into Meyer’s room, he found one of the Apaches still twitching, and immediately cut his throat.  Then he climbed to the roof, gloated over the three bodies there, dragged them one by one to the ledge, and pitched them into the plaza.

“That’ll settle ’em,” he remarked with a sigh of intense satisfaction, like that of a baby when it has broken its rattle.  Coming down again, he looked all the corpses over again, and said with an air of disappointment which was almost sentimental, “On’y a dozen!”

“I kin keer for the Injuns,” he volunteered when the question came up of burying the dead.  “I’d rather keer for ’em than not.”

Before Thurstane knew what was going on, Texas had finished his labor of love.  A crevice in the northern wall of the enclosure looked out upon a steep slope of marl, almost a precipice, which slanted sheer into the boiling flood of the San Juan.  To this crevice Texas dragged one naked carcass after another, bundled it through, launched it with a vigorous shove, and then watched it with a pantherish grin, licking his chops as it were, as it rolled down the steep, splashed into the river, and set out on its swift voyage toward the Pacific.

“I s’pose you’ll want to dig a hole for him” he said, coming into the Casa and looking wistfully at the body of poor young Shubert.

Sergeant Meyer motioned him to go away.  Thurstane was entering in his journal an inventory of the deceased soldier’s effects having already made a minute of the date and cause of his death.  These with other facts, such as name, age, physical description, birthplace, time of service, amount of pay due, balance of clothing-account and stoppages, must be more or less repeated on various records, such as the descriptive book of the company, the daily return, the monthly return, the quarterly return, the muster-roll from which the name would be dropped, and the final statements which were to go to the Adjutant-General and the Paymaster-General.  Even in the desert the monstrous accountability system of the army lived and burgeoned.

Nothing of importance happened until about noon, when the sentinel on the outer wall announced that the Apaches were approaching in force, and Thurstane gave orders to barricade one of the doors of the Casa with some large blocks of adobe, saying to himself, “I ought to have done it before.”