Drummond closed his eyes a moment.  It was all too sweet to be believed.  His right hand, to be sure, refused to move, his left stole up and began groping back of his head.

“May I not thank my nurse?” he said.  “The first thing I was conscious of was her touch upon my forehead.”

But the hands that were so eager, so active when their patient lay unconscious, seemed to shrink from the long, brown fingers searching blindly for them, and not one word had the maiden vouchsafed.

“I heard your voice a moment ago, Ruthie.  Can’t you speak to me now?” he asked, half chiding, half laughing.  “Have you forgotten your friend Jim Drummond and the long, long talks we used to have on the ’Newbern’?”

Forgotten Jim Drummond and those long talks indeed!  Forgotten her hero, her soldier!  Hardly.  Yet no word would she speak.

“The little lady seems all unstrung yet, lieutenant.  Miss Fanny will have to talk for her, I fancy.”  And Wing’s clear, handsome eyes were raised to Miss Harvey’s face as he spoke in a look that seemed to tell how much he envied the soldier who was the object of such devoted attention.  “Shall we move ahead?  The others will join us later on.”

But when a few minutes later strong arms lifted the tall lieutenant from the wagon and bore him to a blanket-covered shelter in a deep rocky recess where the sun’s rays seemed rarely to penetrate, and a cup of clear, cool water was held to his lips, Drummond’s one available hand was uplifted in hopes of capturing the ministering fingers.  There was neither difficulty nor resistance.  It was Sergeant Wing’s gauntlet, and Wing’s cordial voice again accosted him.

“Glad to see you so chipper, lieutenant.  Now, I have some little knowledge of surgery.  Your right arm is broken below the elbow, and you’re badly shocked and bruised.  I have no doubt the surgeon will be with us by this time to-morrow, but I can set that arm just as soon as I have looked the ground over and disposed of ourselves and our prisoners to the best advantage.”

“How many prisoners have we?” asked Drummond.

“Well, as yet, only Moreno and his interesting family and two of their gang, who are very badly wounded.  Some of the others were neither prompt nor explicit about surrendering, and the men seem to have been a trifle impatient in one or two cases.  You should hear the old woman protesting to Miss Harvey her innocence and her husband’s spotless character.  You understand Spanish, do you not?”

“No, only the smattering we pick up at the Point and what ‘broncho’ Spanish I have added to it out here.  Where did you learn it, sergeant?  They tell me you speak it like a native.”

Wing’s sunburned face—­a fine, clear-cut, and manly one it was—­seemed to grow a shade or two redder.

“Oh, I have spoken it many years.  My boyhood was spent on the Pacific slope.  Pardon me, sir, I want to look more carefully after your injuries now.”