They started them homeward within the week, Archer calm, conscious, suffering much, but as, the skilled surgeons told the wife and daughter who had rested not until they reached him, with good hope of recovery. It was 'Tonio for whom they felt the keenest apprehension. 'Tonio had received a bullet meant for the soldier who had once decreed his death, and Archer's anguish was more for him. With them, on the slow homeward way around by the old Wingate road, was Harris, sleepless from anxiety and distress, watching night and day by the side of his two heroes, filling all with wonderment at his endurance; and with Harris, much of the time, by the side of both father and father's self-devoted savior, was Lilian. They brought them back to Sandy. They nursed the general back to life and partial strength. But age and wounds and sorrows all had told on the Mohave chieftain, and slowly he sank, despite their every effort and the doctor's skill. They had pitched a little tent fly for him--he would not be borne within doors--and shaded it with brush and willow, yet left the southward view open so that he could look out upon the broad valley and see the shadows of the mountains steal across it as the sun went westering. He seemed to love to watch the morning flame on the bald summit of the huge peak so close at hand; it made him think of the Picacho about whose base he had sported as a boy. He seemed to love to see Ramon and Pancha hovering ever about him. He would look at them, take their hands, then place their hands together and hold them between his own. But most of all he loved to see Harris bending over him, moving about him, and when Lilian came and gave him drink and touched his fevered head, his glittering eyes would soften and follow her with such a world of wistfulness as though they would speak the longing of his heart. Then he would look from her to Harris, and from Harris back to her, in a way that sent the blushes surging to her forehead, and the sight of those blushes set that young soldier's heart to bounding.