“Beg pardon, lieutenant, but shall I leave a small guard with the pack-train or can they come right along?”

“They’ll go with us, of course.  We can’t leave them here.  We must head for Ceralvo’s at once.  How could those Indians have got over that way?”

“It is beyond me to say, sir.  I didn’t know they ever went west of the Santa Maria.”

“I can hardly believe it now, but there’s no doubting that signal; it is to call us thither at all speed wherever we may be, and means only one thing,—­’Apaches here.’  Sergeant Wing is not the man to get stampeded.  Can they have jumped the stage, do you think, or attacked some of Ceralvo’s people?”

“Lord knows, sir.  I don’t see how they could have swung around there; there’s nothing to tempt them along that range until they get to the pass itself.  They must have come around south of Moreno’s.”

“I think not, sergeant.”

The words were spoken in a very quiet voice.  Drummond turned in surprise, his foot in the stirrup, and looked at the speaker, a keen-eyed trooper of middle age, whose hair was already sprinkled with gray.

“Why not, Bland?”

“Because we have been along the range for nearly fifty miles below here, sir, and haven’t crossed a sign, and because I understand now what I couldn’t account for at two o’clock,—­what I thought must be imagination.”

“What was that?”

“Smoke, sir, off towards the Gila, north of Ceralvo’s, I should say, just about north of west of where we are.”

“Why didn’t you report it?”

“You were asleep, sir, and by the time I got the glasses and looked it had faded out entirely; but it’s my belief the Indians are between us and the river, or were over there north of Ceralvo’s to-day.  If not Indians, who?”

“You ride with me, Bland.  I’ll talk with you further about this.  Come on with the men as soon as you have the packs ready, sergeant.”  And so saying, Lieutenant Drummond mounted and rode slowly down the winding trail among the boulders.  At the foot of the slope, where the water lay gleaming in its rocky bed, he reined his horse to the left to give him his fill of the pool, and here the trooper addressed as Bland presently joined him.

“Where was it you enlisted, Bland?” was the younger soldier’s first question.  “I understand you are familiar with all this country.”

“At Tucson, sir, six months ago, after the stage company discharged me.”

“I remember,” was the answer, as the lieutenant gently drew rein to lift his horse’s head.  “I think you were so frank as to give the reason of your quitting their employment.”

“Well, there was no sense trying to conceal it, or anything else a man may do out here, lieutenant.  They fired me for drinking too much at the wrong time.  The section boss said he couldn’t help himself, and I don’t suppose he could.”

“As I remember,” said Drummond, presently, and with hesitation, for he hated to pry into the past of a man who spoke so frankly and who made no effort to conceal his weakness, “you were driver of the buck-board the Morales gang held up last November over near the Catarinas.”