The paymaster relapsed into silence. It is all very well to have subordinates who know far more than does the senior officer, yet the latter does not always find it agreeable. His own clerk having resigned some six months previous and returned to the East, when Major Sherrick was ordered from San Francisco to Arizona he had employed Mr. Staines at the urgent request of the officer whom he relieved. Staines had property interests in the Territory, he was told, and wanted to remain. He was a man profoundly versed in his duties; accurate, temperate, reliable and of unimpeachable character, said his recommenders. Sherrick was glad to get him, for he himself had no head for figures, and had been made a paymaster from civil life simply because his uncle the Senator found him a failure in every other capacity, and demanded the appointment of an Executive who could not deny him, though he felt like kicking himself when he looked at the long list of grizzled, war-tried captains who were wistful applicants for the longed-for promotion. A tall Mexican stepped forward with much urbanity and grace of manner to assist the paymaster to alight as the ambulance stopped in front of the ranch, and Major Sherrick looked with emotions of surprise upon Pedro Ruiz, the proprietor. “You don't mean to say that's the scoundrel we heard so much bad talk about at headquarters?” he whispered to Staines at the first opportunity. “The very same, sir; the most accomplished cutthroat in Arizona, if we can believe our senses and disregard evidence.” “Where are his men? He seems alone here, all but that old greaser yonder.”