then, have horses and wear trooper hats?  Bending low over his steed and spurring him to the uttermost exertion, a tall, even soldierly, form had darted one instant into view and then gone thundering out of sight.  Up to this moment Wing never had lost full control of his faculties.  Now his brain reeled.  Before his eyes rose a dense cloud of mist rushing forth from the mountain-side.  Bowlders, near at hand, took to waltzing solemnly with their neighbors, and when at last the foremost trooper flung himself from his horse and crept to the sergeant’s side, while his comrades rode on, keeping vigilant watch against the appearance of other foe, Sergeant Wing was found lying beside his dead horse:  he had swooned utterly away.

By and by, with anxious face and bandaged head and arm, Lieutenant Drummond came galloping down; Wing was then submitting to the rude bandaging of his leg and lying limp and weak, his head resting on Dick’s stiffening shoulder.  But Wing’s eyes were covered by his gauntleted hand; he never looked up at his young commander, though he heard his anxious queries.

“Is he much hurt?  Were there many of them?”

“Shot through the leg here, sir,” answered the sturdy corporal, “and was in a dead faint when we got to him.  I don’t know how many there was of them, lieutenant; they skipped off the moment we opened fire.”

“They couldn’t have seen us coming, lieutenant,” eagerly spoke a young recruit.  “They must have thought the sergeant was alone, for when we charged they just lit out for all they were worth, didn’t they, Mike?” he eagerly asked his comrade, an older trooper.

“Oh, shut up, Billy!  There’s nothing an Apache doesn’t see, but we were too far off to tell how many there was.  I only saw one as he lept away.  Shure the sergeant was nearer,—­he could have seen.”

“Sergeant Wing, it is I, Lieutenant Drummond.  Look up a moment if you can.  You were close to them, how many did you see?”

“How many Indians, sir?” asked Wing, faintly.

“Yes, how many?”

A pause.  Then at last,—­

“I didn’t see one, sir.”

X.

Another day had dawned and another patient was added to Miss Harvey’s hospital list at the caves.  The original plan of starting on the return soon after daybreak had now to be abandoned, as Drummond explained, because here was a man who could not stand the journey.  Surely there would not be many hours before the relief party from Stoneman, following their trail, would come speeding to the rescue, bringing to the wounded the needed surgical skill and attention, bringing to the Harvey girls their devoted father.  The only question in the young lieutenant’s mind as the sun rose, a burning, dazzling disk over the distant mountains to the east, was, which will be first to reach us, friends or foes?