Then once more he kneels by Wing.

“Lieutenant, did you ever see a girl behave with greater bravery?  Do you know what she has undergone?—­Miss Harvey, I mean?”

“Both are behaving like heroines, Wing, and I think I am beginning to see through this plot at last.”

“Never let mother know it,—­promise me, sir,—­but when Harvey discharged him—­my uncle, I mean—­he swore he’d be revenged on the old man, and ’twas he——­”

“The double-dyed villain!  I know, I understand now, Wing; you needn’t tell me.  He has been in the pay of the Morales gang for months.  He enlisted so as to learn all the movements of officers and scouting-parties.  He enlisted under his benefactor’s name.  He has forged that, too, in all probability, and then, deserting, it was he who sought to carry away these precious girls, and he came within an ace of succeeding.  By the Eternal, but there will be a day of reckoning for him if ever ‘C’ troop runs foul of him again!  No wonder you couldn’t sleep, poor fellow, for thinking of that mother.  This caps the climax of his scoundrelism.  Where,—­when did you see him last?—­since he enlisted?”

But now Wing’s face is again averted.  He is covering it with his arms.

“Wing, answer me!” exclaims Drummond, springing suddenly to his feet.  “By heaven, I demand to know!” Then down on his knees he goes again, seizing and striving to pull away the nearest arm.  “You need not try, you cannot conceal it now.  I see it all,—­all.  Miss Harvey,” he cries, looking up into the face of the trembling girl, who has hastened in at sound of the excitement in his voice,—­“Miss Harvey, think of it; ’twas no Apache who shot him, ’twas a worse savage,—­his own uncle.”

“Promise me mother shall not know,” pleads poor Wing, striving to rise upon his elbow, striving to restrain the lieutenant, who again has started to his feet.  “Promise me, Miss Fanny; you know how she loved him, how she plead with you.”

“I promise you this, Wing,” says Drummond, through his clinching teeth, “that there’ll be no time for prayer if ever we set eyes on him again; there’ll be no mercy.”

“You can’t let your men kill him in cold blood, lieutenant.  I could not shoot him.”

“No, but, by the God of heaven, I could!”

And now as Wing, exhausted, sinks back to his couch his head is caught on Fanny Harvey’s arm and next is pillowed in her lap.

“Hush!” she murmurs, bending down over him as mother might over sleeping child.  “Hush! you must not speak again.  I know how her heart is bound up in you, and I’m to play mother to you now.”

And as Drummond, tingling all over with wrath and excitement, stands spellbound for the moment, a light step comes to his side, a little hand is laid on the bandaged arm, and Ruth Harvey’s pretty face, two big tears trickling down her cheeks, is looking up in his.

“You, too, will be ill, Mr. Drummond.  Oh, why can’t you go and lie down and rest?  What will we do if both of you are down at once with fever?”