The man fairly reeled in saddle, shocked at the dreadful tidings. "When?--how did it happen? Who's gone with him?" "Some time this morning, from all we can learn. Two squads of cavalry are on the trail, one with Ned Harvey, the other just out from here at dark. The old man and George followed them as soon as they got in. Who's with you?" "Two Mexicans, that's all; they're no account. I'd best leave them here with the mules. They're just behind and have been scared to death already." And so in ten minutes two more of the low-caste, half-breed Mexicans were added to the paymaster's garrison, and Sergeant Feeny's brief exposition of the situation at the ranch only delayed the incoming American long enough to water his horse and stow a little grain in a sack. "I wouldn't wonder a damned bit if the Morales gang _were_ around here," was his discomforting assurance. "None of 'em have been seen about Tucson for a week before we left. Wish I could stay and stand by you, but my first duty is with Mr. Harvey. I've been in his employ nigh on to eight years." "What sort of looking man is Ned Harvey?" persisted the sergeant, still hopeful of some fraud. "Tall, dark, smooth face; looks like a Spaniard almost. I never saw anybody who resembled him hereabouts. I'm afraid it's no plant. I don't want to offend you, sergeant, but I wish to God it _was_ all the Morales gang's doings and that it was only your money they were after. If it's Apaches and they have got the old man's children, he'll never get over it." "By heaven!" muttered Feeny to himself, as the loyal fellow put spurs to his horse and disappeared,--"by heaven! I begin to believe it's both." And now with gloomy face the sergeant returned to where he had left Major Plummer watching the westward trail. A brief word at the door-way assured him the clerk was still alert and ready. A pause under the open window, high above the ground, of the room where slept Moreno's wife and daughter, if they slept at all, told him that all was silence there if not slumber, and then he joined his superior. "That fellow was of the right sort, sergeant," said Plummer. "I wish we had one or two like him." "I wish we had, sir; those Greasers are worse than no guards at all. They'll sit there in the corral and smoke _papellitos_ by the hour, and brag about how they fought their way through the Apaches with Harvey's mules; but for our purpose they're worse than useless. At the first sign of an attack they'd be stampeding out into the darkness, and that's the last we'd see of them. Heard anything further out this way, sir?"