Away out across the desert its red glare chased the Concord wagon wherein, all unconscious of the danger signal, the sisters were now chatting in low tone.

“Drive your best,” had Harvey muttered to his Mexican Jehu, as he leaned out of the saddle to reach his ear.  “Not a word to alarm the girls,” he cautioned his companion, “but be ready for anything.”

Far out beyond the swaying, bounding vehicle; far out across the blistered plain, the glare and gleam fell full upon the brown adobe walls at Moreno’s, and glittering eyes and swarthy faces peered through the westward aperture, while out in the corral the night lights were dancing to and fro, and Feeny, sore perplexed, but obedient to orders, was hurrying the preparations of his men.  Murphy’s wild announcement had carried conviction to the major’s soul, despite all Feeny’s pleadings, and the sight of that beacon furiously burning, the thought of those helpless women being borne off into the horrors of captivity among the Indians, had conspired to rouse the paymaster to unlooked-for assertion of himself and his authority.  In vain had Feeny begged him to think of his money, to remember that outlaws would resort to any trick to rob him of his guard, and might have even overpowered Wing and his party and then lighted the beacon.  The chain of evidence, the straight story told by his morning visitor, the awful news contained in the pencilled note brought in by Mullan, were considerations too potent to be slighted.  In vain did Feeny point out to him that if Apaches were really in the neighborhood Wing would not be content with starting the fire, but would surely signal whither to go in search of them, and that no vestige of signal-torch had appeared.  Old Plummer vowed he could never again know a moment of peace if he neglected to do anything or everything in his power to save the girls.  Most reluctantly he agreed that Feeny should remain in charge of the safe and the two drugged and helpless men.  Murphy and all the others were ordered out forthwith to march rapidly northeastward until they struck the trail of the pursuit and then to follow that.  In fifteen minutes, with four pack-mules ambling behind, away they went into the darkness, and all that was left to man the ranch and defend the government treasury against all comers was the phlegmatic but determined paymaster, his physically wrecked but devoted clerk, Sergeant Feeny, raging at heart but full of fight, and a half-breed packer named Pedro; the two senseless and drunken troopers were of course of no use to anybody.

Even as the detachment mounted, Latham with it, old Moreno appeared at the door-way shrouded in his serape.  Approaching Murphy by the side farthest from Plummer and the sergeant, he slipped a fat canteen from under his cloak and thrust it into the corporal’s ready hand.