seemed cracked with heat and age.  The stout rope that stretched tautly from the coil passed over a wooden wheel, and disappeared through a broad-framed aperture into the bowels of the earth.  Close at hand in the shade of a brush-covered “leanto” hung three or four huge ollas, earthen water-jars, swathed in gunny sack and blanket.  Beyond them, warped out of all possibility of future usefulness, stood what had once been the running gear of a California buck-board.  Behind it dangled from dusty pegs portions of leather harness, which all the neat’s-foot oil of the military pharmacopoeia could never again restore to softness or pliability.  A newer edition of the same class of vehicle was covered by a canvas “’paulin.”  A huge stack of barley bags was piled at the far end of the corral, guarded from depredation (quadrupedal) by a barrier of wooden slats, mostly down, and by a tattered biped, very sound asleep.

“Where’s the sergeant?” queried the paymaster, slowly, addressing no one in particular, but looking plaintively around him.

Still leaning a brown chin on a nearly black hand, and stirring up his spider with the forked stick he held in the other paw, the boy simply tilted his head towards the dark opening under the farther end of the shed, an aperture that seemed to lead to nothing but blackness beyond.

“What’s he doing?”

“No sa-a-abe,” drawled the boy, never lifting his handsome eyes from the joys before him.

“Why hasn’t he harnessed up?”

A shrug of the shoulders was the only reply.

“Hey?”

“No sa-a-abe,” slowly as before.

“What’s your name?”

“Jose.”

“Well, here, Jose, you go and tell him I want him.”

The boy slowly pulled himself together and found his feet; started reluctantly to obey; glanced back at his captive, now scuttling off for freedom; turned again, scotched him with his forked stick, and then with a vicious “huh!” drove the struggling Araneid into the sandy soil.  This done, he lounged off towards the dark corner in the wall of the ranch and dove out of sight.

Presently there slowly issued from this recess a sturdy form in dusty blue blouse, the sleeves of which were decorated with chevrons in far-faded yellow.  Under the shabby slouch hat a round, sun-blistered, freckled face, bristling with a week-old beard, peered forth at the staff official with an expression half of languid tolerance, half of mild irritation.  In most perfunctory fashion the soldier just touched the hat-rim with his forefinger, then dropped the hand into a convenient pocket.  It was plain that he felt but faint respect for the staff rank and station of the man in goggles and authority.

“Sergeant Feeny, I thought I told you I wanted everything ready to start at sunset.”

“You did, sir, and then you undid it,” was the prompt and sturdy reply.

The paymaster stood irresolute.  Through the shading spectacles of green his eyes seemed devoid of any expression.  His attitude remained unchanged, thumbs in the low-cut pockets of his wide-flapping trousers, shoulders meek and drooping.