hoofs and cheering, and both the sergeant and Mr. Harvey had shouted that the troops were coming and rushed out to meet them,—­“And the next thing I knew,” said Woods, “was seeing Feeny flattened out on the ground and crawling on his hands and knees and the room filled with roughs, some Mexicans, some Yanks, and I slipped into the corral and saw one of them shoot Feeny as he was trying to crawl after me; and while they were swearing and searching for the safe and carrying it out, Mr. Dawes and Mullan managed, somehow, to help the paymaster out, and then went in after the other man.”  Then Woods could tell little more.  One thing, he said, amazed and excited him so he couldn’t believe his eyes, but he was almost ready to swear that the fellow Feeny ran to shake hands with was a soldier in uniform, and that he held Feeny’s hand while another man came up behind and “mashed” him with the butt of his pistol, and that this fellow in soldier clothes was the man who afterwards shot Feeny as he was trying to crawl away.

Drummond looked around at the man incredulous,—­almost derisive.  The story was improbable, too much so to deserve even faint attention.  Just then Meinecke came back and, precise as ever, stood attention and saluted.

“Herr Lieutenant, Private Bland is not with my party at all, sir.”

“Did you leave him back with the packs?”

“No, sir; the men say he wasn’t with us all night.  He rode ahead with the lieutenant until we came to Corporal Donovan’s body.”

“He’s not been with me since,” exclaimed the lieutenant.  “Sergeant Lee, ask if any of the men have seen him.”

Lee was gone but a moment, then came back with grave face and troubled eyes, bringing with him a young trooper who was serving his first enlistment.

“Private Goss, here, has a queer story to tell, sir.”

“What do you know?  What have you seen?” asked Drummond.

“Why, sir, right after Sergeant Lee caught sight of the fire and sung out that it was Moreno’s I was back about a couple of rods looking for my canteen.  I was that startled when they found Corporal Donovan dead that I dropped it, and all of a sudden somebody comes out past me leading his horse, and I asked him what he had lost, and he said his pipe, and passed me by, and I thought nothing more about it,—­only no sooner did he get out into the dark where I couldn’t see him than I heard all of a sudden a horse start at full gallop right over in this direction, and now I think of it it must have been Bland, for it was him that passed me, sir,—­sneaking out like.”

Drummond sprang to his feet.

“What say you to this, sergeant?  Do you believe,—­do you think it possible that Bland has deserted and joined these outlaws?”

“I don’t know what to think, sir, but I haven’t forgotten what Feeny said of him.”

“What was that?”

“That he had too smooth a tongue to have led a rough and honest life; that if he was a Texan as he claimed, Texas people had learned to talk a different lingo since he was stationed among them with the old Second Cavalry before the war, and that he wished he’d been there at Lowell when the adjutant accepted those letters from former officers of the regiment as genuine.  Bland would never show them to Feeny.  Said he had sent ’em all to his home in Texas.  That was what made bad blood between them.”