What was Plummer to do?  He didn’t want to rouse the sergeant.  This wasn’t going back to Ceralvo’s, but riding northward to the rescue of imperilled beauty.  He simply couldn’t refuse, especially when Donovan and others were eager to go.  From Mr. Harvey he learned that his father had married into an old Spanish Mexican family at Havana, had been induced by them to take charge of certain business in Matamoras, and that long afterwards he had removed to Guaymas and thence to Tucson.  The children had been educated at San Francisco, and the sisters, now seventeen and fifteen years of age respectively, were soon to go to Cuba to visit relatives of their mother, but were determined once more to see the quaint old home at Tucson before so doing; hence this journey under his charge.  The story seemed straight enough.  Plummer had never yet been to Tucson, but at Drum Barracks and Wilmington he had often heard of the Harveys, and Donovan swore he knew them all by sight, especially the old man.  The matter was settled before Plummer really knew whether to take the responsibility or not, and the cavalry corporal with five men rode back into the fiery heat of the Arizona day and was miles away towards the Gila before Feeny awoke to a realizing sense of what had happened.  Then he came out and blasphemed.  There in that wretched little green safe were locked up thousands enough of dollars to tempt all the outlawry of the Occident to any deed of desperation that might lead to the capture of the booty, and with Donovan and his party away Feeny saw he had but half a dozen men for defence.

At his interposition the major had at least done one thing,—­warned Moreno not to sell a drop of his fiery mescal to any one of the men; and, when the Mexican expressed entire willingness to acquiesce, Feeny’s suspicions were redoubled, and he picked out Trooper Latham, a New Englander whom some strange and untoward fate had led into the ranks, and stationed him in the bullet-scarred bar-room of the ranch, with strict orders to allow not a drop to be drawn or served to any one without the sanction of Sergeant Feeny or his superior officer, the major.  Even the humiliation of this proceeding had in no wise disturbed Moreno’s suavity.  “All I possess is at your feet,” he had said to the major, with Castilian grace and gravity; “take or withhold it as you will.”

“Infernal old hypocrite!” swore Feeny, between his strong, set teeth.  “I believe he’d like nothing better than to get the escort drunk and turn us over bag and baggage to the Morales gang.”

Thrice during the hot afternoon had Feeny scouted the premises and striven to find what number and manner of men Moreno might have in concealment there.  Questioning was of little use.  Moreno was ready to answer to anything, and was never known to halt at a lie.  Old Miguel, the half-breed, who did odd jobs about the well and the corral, expressed profound ignorance both of the situation and Feeny’s