“Oh, he’d have gone,—­certainly,—­that’s his business, but it isn’t yours, major.  You’ve got government money there enough to buy up every rum-hole south of the Gila.  You’re expected to pay at Stoneman, Grant and Goodwin and Crittenden and Bowie, where they haven’t had a cent since last Christmas and here it is the middle of May.  You ought to have pushed through with all speed, so none of these jay-hawkers could get wind of your going, let alone the Apaches.  Every hour you halt is clear gain to them, and here you’ve simply got to stay twenty-four hours all along of a cock-and-bull story about some stage-load of frightened women fifteen miles back at Gila Bend.  It’s a plant, major, that’s what I believe.”

Old Plummer kicked the toe of his shoe into the sandy soil and hung a reflective head.  “I wish you hadn’t shut your eyes,” he drawled at length.

“I wouldn’t, sir, if I hadn’t thought you’d keep yours open.  You slept all night, sir, you and Mr. Dawes, while I rode alongside with finger on trigger every minute.”

Absorbed in their gloomy conversation, neither man noticed that the wooden shutter in the adobe wall close at hand had been noiselessly opened from within, just an inch or two.  Neither knew, neither could see that behind it, in the gathering darkness of the short summer evening, a shadowy form was crouching.

“Then you think we must stay here, do you?” queried the paymaster.

“Think?  I know it.  Why, the range ahead is alive with Apaches, and we can’t stand ’em off with only half a dozen men.  Your clerk’s no ’count, major.”

Old Plummer stood irresolute.  His clerk, a consumptive and broken-down relative, was at that moment lying nerveless on a rude bunk within the ranch, bemoaning the fate that had impelled him to seek Arizona in search of health.  He was indeed of little “’count,” as the paymaster well knew.  After a moment’s painful thought the words rose slowly to his lips.

“Well, perhaps you know best, so here we stay till to-morrow night, or at least until they get back.”

One could almost hear the whisper in the deep recess of the retaining wall,—­sibilant, gasping.  Some one crouching still farther back in the black depths of the interior did hear.

“Santa Maria!”

But when a moment later the proprietor of this roadside ranch, this artificial oasis in a land of desolation, strolled into the big bare room where half a dozen troopers were dozing or gambling, it was with an air of confidential joviality that he whispered to the corporal in charge,—­

“Our fren’, the major, he riffuse me sell you aguardiente,—­mescal; but wait—­to-night.”

“Oh, damn it, Moreno, we’ll be half-way to Stoneman by that time,” interrupted the trooper, savagely.  “Who’s to know where we got the stuff?  We’ll make ’em believe Donovan’s squad brought it in from Ceralvo’s.  Give me a drink now anyhow, you infernal Greaser; I’m all burnt out with such a day as this.  We’ve got to start the moment they get back, and there won’t be any time then.”