And so while the seniors among the sergeants were becoming gradually the associates, if not the intimates, of this fine-looking trooper, the mass of the regiment, or rather the little detachment thereof stationed at Lowell, looked upon Bland with the eye of suspicion.  There was one sergeant who repudiated him entirely, and who openly professed his disbelief in Bland’s account of himself, and that was Feeny.  “He may have testimonials from all Texas,” said he, hotly, “but I’ve no use for that sort of credentials.  Who can vouch for his goings and comings hereabouts before he joined us?  I think Murphy’s right, and if I was stationed at Lowell and belonged to his troop, you bet I’d watch him close.”

Now, in all the command it would have been a hard matter to find a soldier in whose favor appearances were so unanimously allied.  Tall, erect, sinewy, and active, he rode or walked with an easy grace that none could fail to mark.  His features were fine and clear cut; his eyes a dark hazel, with heavy curling lashes and bushy, low-arched brows; his complexion, naturally dark, was bronzed by sun and sand-storm to a hue almost Mexican.  He shaved clean all but the heavy moustache that drooped over his firm lips, and the sprinkling of gray about the brows, temples, and moustache was most becoming to his peculiar style.  One prominent mark had he which the descriptive book of his company referred to simply as “sabre-scar on right jaw,” but it deserved mention more extended, for the whitish streak ran like a groove from just below the ear-tip to the angle of the square, resolute chin.  It looked as though in some desperate fray a mad sweep had been made with vengeful blade straight for the jugular, and, just missing that, had laid open the jaw for full four inches.  “But,” said Feeny, “what could he have been doing, and in what position could he have been, sitting or standing, to get a sabre-stroke like that?  Where was his guard?  A Bowie-knife, now ——­” and there the suggestion ended.

But it was the scarred side of Bland’s soldierly face that young Lieutenant Drummond was so closely studying as they rode out into the starlit Arizona night.  He, too, had heard the camp chat about this apparently frank, open-hearted trooper, and had found himself more than once speculating as to his real past, not the past of his imagination or of his easy off-hand description.  By this time, in perfect silence save for the occasional clink of canteen, the gurgle of imprisoned water, or, once in a while, the click of iron-shod hoof, the troop was marching in shadowy column of twos well out beyond the falda and over the almost dead level of the plain.  Far ahead the beacon still blazed brightly and beckoned them on.  It was time for precaution.

“Sergeant,” said Drummond, “send a corporal and four men forward.  Let them spread out across the front and keep three or four hundred yards ahead of us.  Better take those with the freshest horses, as I want them to scout thoroughly and to be on the alert for the faintest sound.  Any of our men who know this valley well?”