“How could we ever pay you?” said Taisie Lockhart, turning upon him fully now the gaze of her disconcerting eyes. “You’ve more than paid me now, my dear girl,” said the old warrior. “Lockhart, you said your name was? What was your father’s name?” “His name was Burleson Lockhart, sir. He was colonel of the Ninth Volunteers in the war. We came from Alabama, once. But my father did not believe in the secession, though he fought with Texas.” “Why, I knew him! His regiment and mine were opposed, in Tennessee!” His voice dropped. “But the men said you were an orphan. Your father did not get back from the war?” Sudden memory caused her to drop her face in her hands. Once more her foreman spoke for her. “Her pap was killed on the Missouri border, after the war, by the Federal bushwackers up there. He was driving cows up thataway. Them Yankee people in Austin have done robbed this girl of everything she had. We was driving these cows to see if we couldn’t make a little stake for her oncet more.” Sandy Griswold sat silent for a time. At last he spoke quietly to the tall girl who sat on a bed roll beside him. “Well, now!” he said. “Well now, we’ll see what can be done. You don’t belong here, but I’d be no sort of a soldier if I didn’t see you through.” Now, as though by providential plan, had arrived unity of purpose and cheerfulness of spirit, an hour earlier unpredictable. Colonel Sandy Griswold was no man to delay action. In a half hour the camp was broken, and the entire party, preceded by the troopers, was retracing the way south to the scene of yesterday’s disaster. The commanding officer rode by Taisie Lockhart’s cart. The ferret eyes of the sullen Comanche saw now what had been hidden in the _carreta_. Between the cavalry commander and these wild savages there existed a distinct understanding of some sort, resting on fear of the troopers’ carbines. “I’m going to put the whole band to work for you,” said Griswold, and called his interpreter. The Del Sol men found themselves before long enriched by the recruitment of a couple of dozen laughing young Indian braves—all of them unarmed—who for the mere excitement of the thing were ready to assist in the rounding up of the scattered cattle and horses. A strangely mixed round-up band they made, half of them grim and silent, the other half wildly whooping, when they started off down the trail which lay written on the grassy soil.