And so in ten minutes two more of the low-caste, half-breed Mexicans were added to the paymaster’s garrison, and Sergeant Feeny’s brief exposition of the situation at the ranch only delayed the incoming American long enough to water his horse and stow a little grain in a sack.

“I wouldn’t wonder a damned bit if the Morales gang were around here,” was his discomforting assurance.  “None of ’em have been seen about Tucson for a week before we left.  Wish I could stay and stand by you, but my first duty is with Mr. Harvey.  I’ve been in his employ nigh on to eight years.”

“What sort of looking man is Ned Harvey?” persisted the sergeant, still hopeful of some fraud.

“Tall, dark, smooth face; looks like a Spaniard almost.  I never saw anybody who resembled him hereabouts.  I’m afraid it’s no plant.  I don’t want to offend you, sergeant, but I wish to God it was all the Morales gang’s doings and that it was only your money they were after.  If it’s Apaches and they have got the old man’s children, he’ll never get over it.”

“By heaven!” muttered Feeny to himself, as the loyal fellow put spurs to his horse and disappeared,—­“by heaven!  I begin to believe it’s both.”

And now with gloomy face the sergeant returned to where he had left Major Plummer watching the westward trail.  A brief word at the door-way assured him the clerk was still alert and ready.  A pause under the open window, high above the ground, of the room where slept Moreno’s wife and daughter, if they slept at all, told him that all was silence there if not slumber, and then he joined his superior.

“That fellow was of the right sort, sergeant,” said Plummer.  “I wish we had one or two like him.”

“I wish we had, sir; those Greasers are worse than no guards at all.  They’ll sit there in the corral and smoke papellitos by the hour, and brag about how they fought their way through the Apaches with Harvey’s mules; but for our purpose they’re worse than useless.  At the first sign of an attack they’d be stampeding out into the darkness, and that’s the last we’d see of them.  Heard anything further out this way, sir?”

“Why, confound it! yes.  I try to convince myself it’s only imagination; but two or three times, far out there towards the Picacho, I’ve heard that whip cracking.  I have felt sure there was a hammering sound, as though some one were pounding on a wagon-tire.  Once I was sure I heard a horse snort. That I was in a measure expecting.  If those fellows mean to attack, they’ll come mounted, of course; but what wagon would they have?”

“One of Ceralvo’s, perhaps, to cart off the safe in, if they couldn’t bust into it here.”

“There!  Hark now, sergeant! didn’t you hear?” suddenly spoke the major, throwing up a warning hand.

Both men held their breath, listening intently.  For a moment nothing but the beating of their own hearts served to give the faintest sound.  Then, out to the west, under the starlit vault of the heavens, somewhere in that black expanse of desert, plainly and distinctly there rose the measured sound of iron or stone beating on iron.  Whether it were tire or linch-pin, hame or brake, something metallic about a wagon or buck-board was being pounded into place or shape.