Somebody was fumbling at the fastening of the tent flap.
“What is wanted, sergeant?” he quickly hailed.
“Open, quick!” was the low-toned answer. “Come to the door. No, no, bring no light,” was the breathless caution, as he struck a match.
“Who is this?” he demanded, with strange thrill at heart – something in those tones he well knew – yet it could not be. A dim figure in shrouding serape was crouching at the front tent pole as he threw open the flap.
“Good God! Isabel!”
“Si – Yes. Hush, senor, no one must hear, no one must know ‘twas I. Quick! Wake your men! Saddle! Ride hard till you catch the paymaster! Never leave him till you are beyond Canyon del Muerto, and then never come to the rancho again – never!”
SECOND CHAPTER
THAT off mule of the paymaster’s ambulance been a quadruped of wonderful recuperative powers. She had gone nearly dead lame all the previous day, and now at 5 o’clock on this breezy morning was trotting along as though she had never known a twinge in her life. Mr. Staines was apparently nonplussed. Acting on his advice, the paymaster had decided to break camp soon after 2 o’clock, make coffee, and then start for Rawlins’ camp at once. He confidently expected to have to drag along at a slow walk, and his idea was to get well through the Canyon del Muerto before the heat of the day. The unexpected recovery of Jenny, however, enabled them to go bowling ahead over the level flat, and at sunrise they were already in sight of the northern entrance to the gorge. It was odd how early Mr. Staines began to develop lively interest in the condition of that mule. First he suggested to the driver that he was going too fast, and would bring on that lameness again; but the driver replied that it was Jenny herself who was doing most of the pulling. Then Staines became fearful lest the cavalry escort should get exhausted by such steady trotting, and ventured to say to Major Sherrick that they ought to rein up on their account. Sherrick was eager to push ahead, and, like most other men not to the manner born, never for a moment thought of such a thing as a horse’s getting used up by simply carrying a man-at-arms six hours at ceaseless trot or lope. However, he knew that Staines was far more experienced in such matters than he, and so could not disregard his advice.
“How is it, sergeant, are we going too fast for you?” he asked.
“Not a bit of it, sir,” was the cheery answer.
“We’re glad enough to go lively now and rest all day in the shade.”
“You see how it is, Staines; they don’t want to slack up speed. We’ll get to Rawlins’ in time for breakfast at this rate,” and again Staines was silent. Presently the team began the ascent of a rolling wave of foothill, around which the roadway twisted as only Arizona roadways can, and at the crest the driver reined in to give his mules a “breather.” Staines leaped from the ambulance for a stretch. The troopers promptly dismounted and loosened saddle girths.
“Yonder is the mouth of the Canyon, sir,” said the sergeant, pointing to a rift in the range to the south, now gorgeously lighted up by the morning sunshine.
“How long is the defile, sergeant?”
“Not more than four miles, sir – that is, the Canyon itself – but it is crooked as a ram’s horn, and the approach on the other side is a long, winding valley.”
“When were you there last?” asked Staines.
“About six months ago, just after Dins-more was murdered.”
Staines turned quickly away and strolled back a few yards along the road.
“You knew Dinsmore, then?” asked the paymaster.
“I knew him well, sir. We had served together during the war. They said he fell in love with a pretty Mexican girl at Tucson, and she would not listen to him. Some of the men heard that she was a daughter of old Pedro who keeps that ranch, and that it was hoping to see her that he went there.”
“I know. I remember hearing about it all then,” said the paymaster. “Did you ever see anything of the man who was said to have killed him?”
“Sonora Bill? No, sir; and I don’t know anyone who ever did. He was always spoken of as the chief of a gang of cutthroats and stage robbers down around Tucson. They used to masquerade as Apaches sometimes – that’s the way they were never caught. The time they robbed Colonel Wood and killed his clerk ‘I’ troop was scouting not ten miles away, and blessed if some of the very gang didn’t gallop to Lieutenant Breese and swear the Apaches had attacked their camp here in Canyon del Muerto, so that when the lieutenant was wanted to chase the thieves his troop couldn’t be found anywhere – he was ‘way up here hunting for Apaches in the Maricopa range. The queer thing about that gang was that they always knew just when a paymaster’s outfit or a Government officer with funds would be along. It was those fellows that robbed Major Rounds, the quartermaster, and jumped the stage when Lieutenant Spaulding and his wife were aboard. She had beautiful diamonds that they were after, but the lieutenant fooled them – he had them sent by express two days afterward.”
Mr. Staines came back toward the ambulance at this moment, took a field glass from its case, and retraced his steps along the road some twenty yards. Here he adjusted the glass and looked long toward the northeast.
“All ready to start, sir,” said the driver.
The major swung himself up to his seat; the troopers quietly “sinched” their saddles and mounted, and still the clerk stood there absorbed.
“Come, Staines!” shouted the paymaster, impatiently, “we’re waiting for you.” And still he did not move. The sergeant whirled his horse about and clattered back to where he stood.
“Come, sir, the major’s waiting.” Staines turned abruptly and, silent as ever, hurried to the wagon.
“What were you staring at so long?” said the paymaster, pettishly, as his assistant clambered in. “I shouted two or three times.”
Staines’ face was pale, yet there were drops of sweat upon his brow.
“I thought I saw a party of horsemen out there on the flats.”
“The devil!” said the paymaster, with sudden interest. “Where? Let me look.”
“You can’t see now, sir. Even the dust cloud is gone. They are behind that low ridge some eight or ten miles out there in the valley.”
“Go on, driver, it’s only cattle from the ranch or something of that kind. I didn’t know, by the way you looked and spoke, but that it might be some of Sonora Bill’s gang.”
“Hardly, sir; they haven’t been heard of for a year, and once away from Pedro’s we are safe enough anyhow.”
Half an hour later the four-mule team was winding slowly up a rocky path. On both sides the heights were steep, covered with a thick undergrowth of scrub oak and juniper. Here and there rocky cliffs jutted out from the hillside and stood like sentinels along the way. The sergeant, with one trooper, rode some distance ahead, their carbines “advanced” and ready for use, for Edwards was an old campaigner, and, though he thought it far from probable that any outlaws would be fools enough to attempt to “get away with” a paymaster’s bank when he and his five men were the guardians and Captain Rawlins with his whole troop was but a short distance away, he had learned the lesson of precaution. Major Sherrick, with his iron safe under his own seat, grasped a rifle in both hands. The driver was whistling softly to himself and glancing attentively ahead, for there was a continuous outcrop of boulders all along the road. The remaining troopers, four in number, rode close behind or alongside the wagon.
Presently they reached a point where, after turning a precipitous ledge of rock, glistening in the morning sunshine, they saw before them a somewhat steep incline.