general principles of all honest means and honest men, all prompted him to order and enforce a renewal of the attack, all served to madden him to such a degree that even burning his adversaries to death seemed simply a case of serving them right.  What cared he that two of the besieged were fair young girls, non-combatants?  They were George Harvey’s daughters, and that in itself was enough to bring balm to his soul and well-nigh cause him to forget his physical ills.  One or two of the band strove to point out that the faintest indignity offered to the sisters would array not only all Arizona, but all Mexico against them.  Like dogs they would be hunted to their holes and no quarter be given.  Returning hitherto with their spoils, Chihuahua or Sonora had welcomed them with open arms; but what outlaw could find refuge in Mexican soil who had dared to wrong the children of George Harvey and Inez Romero?  It was even as they were pointing this out to Pasqual and urging that he consent to be lifted into the ambulance and driven away southward before the return of the cavalry, that Moreno himself appeared.  Slipping out of his western window, dropping to the ground and making complete circuit of the corral, he suddenly joined in the excited conference.  What he said was in Spanish, or that pan-Arizona patois that there passes current for such, and was a wild, fervid appeal.  They had ruined him, him and his.  He was unmasked, betrayed, for now his connection with the band was established beyond all question; now he was known and would soon be branded as an outlaw.  His home was being destroyed before his eyes,—­not that that amounted to much now that he could no longer occupy it,—­his wife and child must flee at once for Sonora and he go with them, but recompense for his loss he must have; never again could he venture into Arizona:  he would be known far and wide as the betrayer of his benefactor’s children, though he called God and all the saints in the Spanish calendar to witness he never dreamed of their being involved in his plot.  The paymaster’s funds, not the lives of any of the paymaster’s men, were what he had sought to take, and now, there lay the dollars almost within their grasp, but unless captured at once would be gone forever.

“I know that pig of a sergeant,—­may the flames of hell envelop him for all eternity!” he cried.  “He will not scruple to do as he says.  He will cast every package into the seething furnace. Mira! Look; the shed is now all ablaze.  In one minute the roof of the rancho will burst into flame.  There is not an instant to lose.  I adjure you let the daughters of Harvey, the son, the men come out at once; swear to them safety, honor, protection.  Let them go their way now, now.  Then you will have to deal with only two or three, and the treasure is ours.  Look you, Sanchez, Pedro, Jose, down with that shed next the rancho! hurl it, drag it down so that its fire cannot reach the brush beyond, then we can parley, we can win their ear.  They will be but too glad to be spared to go on their way unharmed.  Yonder are their mules across the corral.  Hitch them in at once.  Save the others for the ambulance and the buck-board here, and for our noble chief.  Is it not so, capitan?  Am I not right?”