Drummond looked curiously about him, so far as was possible without moving his pain-stricken head.  He was lying in a deep recess in some dark and rocky canon whose sides were vertical walls.  Tumbling down from the wooded heights above—­rare sight in Arizona—­a little brook of clear, sparkling water came brawling and plashing over its stony bed at his feet and went on down the gorge to its opening on the sandy plain.  There, presumably, it burrowed into the bosom of the earth, for no vestige of running stream could the Cababi Valley show.  The walls about him were in places grimy with the smoke of cook fires.  Overhead, not fifty feet away, a gnarled and stunted little cedar jutted out from some crevice in the rocks and stood at the edge of the cliff.  A soldier was clinging to it with one hand and pointing out towards the east with the other.  Drummond recognized the voice as that of one of his own troop when the man called out,—­

“Two of our fellers are coming with the old yellow ambulance, sergeant; but I can’t see the others.”

“All right, Patterson.  Try to see where the rest have gone and what they’re doing.  I’ll send the glass up to you presently.  What I’m afraid of, lieutenant, is that in their rage over Donovan’s death, and Mullan’s, and all the devil’s work done there at Moreno’s, and your mishap, too, the men have become uncontrollable, and will never let up on the pursuit until they have killed the last one of that gang.  These two who are coming in with the bodies of the Morales brothers probably have worn-out horses, or perhaps Lee ordered them to stay and guard the safe.  The last I saw of any of the gang they were disappearing over the desert to the south, striking for Sonora Pass.”

“I wonder they didn’t all come in here,” said Drummond.

“Well, hardly that, lieutenant.  They knew they would be followed here, penned up, where their capture would only be a question of time.  A hundred cavalrymen would be around them in a very few hours, and we could send to Lowell for those old mountain howitzers and just leisurely shell them out.  Then, when they surrendered,—­as they’d have to,—­the civil authorities would immediately step in and claim jurisdiction, claim the prisoners, too.  We’d simply have to turn them over to justice as a matter of course, and you know, and they know, that the only judge apt to sit on their case would be that of our eminent frontiersman and fellow-citizen,—­Lynch.  They are scattering like Apaches through the mountains and will reassemble and count noses later on.  Thanks to you and ‘C’ troop, they have lost all they had gained and their leaders besides.  No, sir, they won’t stop this side of the Mexican line.”

“There’s one, Wing, I hope to heaven they’ll never lose sight of till they run him down.”

“Who’s that, sir?”

“The fellow who was enlisted in ‘C’ troop last winter at Tucson and who deserted last night to join this gang.  He drove for the stage company last year and was discharged.  He gave his name as Bland.”