"Sometimes it's the Gila Valley, and sometimes it's rum," said Landor. "It's rum with a good many." "Why shouldn't it be? What the deuce has a fellow got to do but drink and gamble? You have to, to keep your mind off it." The lieutenant himself did neither, but he argued that his mind was never off it. Felipa thought it was not quite so bad as that, and she poured herself another cup of the Rio, strong as lye, with which she saturated her system, to keep off the fever. "You might marry," Landor suggested. "You can always do that when all else fails." "Who is there to marry hereabouts? And always supposing there were some one, I'd be sent off on a scout next day, and have to ship her back East for an indefinite time. It would be just my blamed luck." The breakfast humor when the thermometer has been a hundred and fifteen in the shade for long months, is pessimistic. "Don't get married then, please," said Felipa, "not for a few days at any rate. I don't want Captain Landor to go off until he gets over these chills and things." There was a knock at the door of the tent, and it opened. The adjutant came in. "I say, Landor--" "I say, old man, shut that door! Look at the flies. Now go on," he added, as the door banged; and he rose to draw a chair to the table. "Can't stay," said the adjutant, all breathless. "The line's down between here and the Agency; but a runner has just come in, and there's trouble. The bucks are restless. Want to join Victorio in New Mexico. You've both got to get right over there." It was the always expected, the never ceasing. Landor looked at his wife and stroked his mustache with a shaking hand. His face was yellow, and his hair had grown noticeably grayer. "You are not fit to go," Felipa said resignedly, "but that doesn't matter, of course." "No," he agreed, "it doesn't matter. And I shall do well enough." Then the three went out, and she finished her breakfast alone. In less than an hour the troop was ready, the men flannel-shirted and gauntleted, their soft felt hats pulled over their eyes, standing reins in hand, foot in stirrup, beside the fine, big horses that Crook had substituted for the broncos of the plains cavalry of former years. Down by the corrals the pack-mules were ready, too, grunting under their aparejos and packs. A thick, hot wind, fraught with sand, was beginning, presaging one of the fearful dust storms of the southwest. The air dried the very blood in the veins. The flies, sticky and insistent, clung and buzzed about the horses' eyes and nostrils. Bunches of tumbleweed and hay went whirling across the parade. Landor came trotting over from his quarters, followed by his orderly, and the troops moved off across the flat, toward the river.