“Now it happened when this news came Colonel Weede was in Nogales with his staff, an’ the officer left in charge didn’t know how to proceed.  Rojas’s camp was across the line in Mexico, an’ ridin’ over there was serious business.  It meant a whole lot more than just scatterin’ one Greaser camp.  It was what had been botherin’ more’n one colonel along the line.  Thorne’s feller soldiers was anxious to get him out of a bad fix, but they had to wait for orders.

“When Nell found out Thorne was bein’ starved an’ beat in a dobe shack no more’n two mile across the line, she shore stirred up that cavalry camp.  Shore!  She told them soldiers Rojas was holdin’ Thorne—­torturin’ him to make him tell where Mercedes was.  She told about Mercedes—­how sweet an’ beautiful she was—­how her father had been murdered by Rojas—­how she had been hounded by the bandit—­how ill an’ miserable she was, waitin’ for her lover.  An’ she begged the cavalrymen to rescue Thorne.

“From the way it was told to me I reckon them cavalrymen went up in the air.  Fine, fiery lot of young bloods, I thought, achin’ for a scrap.  But the officer in charge, bein’ in a ticklish place, still held out for higher orders.

“Then Nell broke loose.  You-all know Nell’s tongue is sometimes like a choya thorn.  I’d have give somethin’ to see her work up that soldier outfit.  Nell’s never so pretty as when she’s mad.  An’ this last stunt of hers was no girly tantrum, as Beldin’ calls it.  She musta been ragin’ with all the hell there’s in a woman....Can’t you fellers see her on Blanco Sol with her eyes turnin’ black?”

Ladd mopped his sweaty face with his dusty scarf.  He was beaming.  He was growing excited, hurried in his narrative.

“Right out then Nell swore she’d go after Thorne.  If them cavalrymen couldn’t ride with a Western girl to save a brother American—­let them hang back!  One feller, under orders, tried to stop Blanco Sol.  An’ that feller invited himself to the hospital.  Then the cavalrymen went flyin’ for their hosses.  Mebbe Nell’s move was just foxy—­woman’s cunnin’.  But I’m thinkin’ as she felt then she’d have sent Blanco Sol straight into Rojas’s camp, which, I’d forgot to say, was in plain sight.

“It didn’t take long for every cavalryman in that camp to get wind of what was comin’ off.  Shore they musta been wild.  They strung out after Nell in a thunderin’ troop.

“Say, I wish you fellers could see the lane that bunch of hosses left in the greasewood an’ cactus.  Looks like there’d been a cattle stampede on the desert....Blanco Sol stayed out in front, you can gamble on that.  Right into Rojas’s camp!  Sabe, you senors?  Gawd Almighty!  I never had grief that ’d hold a candle to this one of bein’ too late to see Nell an’ Sol in their one best race.