Springing from their blanket beds the troopers threw their carbine slings over their shoulders and flew to their horses. "Never mind your saddles--no time for that!" yelled Blake, as he slipped the bit between the teeth of his startled charger, then threw himself astride the naked back. "Up with you and come on!" Then with a dozen ready fellows at his heels away he darted into the gloom, guided only by the yells and flashes far out over the sandy plain. In less than two minutes every trooper in the little command had gone spurring in pursuit, and Lieutenant Loring, suddenly aroused from slumber, revolver in hand, looking eagerly about for explanation of the row, found himself standing guard over his treasure-laden saddle-bags--utterly alone.

Then came the whish of a riata through the pulseless air, the quick whir-r-r of the horse-hair rope through the loop as it settled down over his head, a snap as it flew taut, a sudden and violent shock as his feet were jerked from under him, the crack of his revolver--aimless, a stunning blow on his prostrate head, then oblivion.

CHAPTER IX.

A week later the surgeon at Camp Cooke found himself minus one of his ambulances after all. In response to a penciled note from Blake it had been hurried from what there was of the shack aggregation at that point to what was left of Sancho's, Major Starke and the doctor with it. They found much of the corral in ruins and one end of the rancho badly scorched. "The wife of my brother," with Pancha, and that ceremonious copy of the Castilian himself had disappeared, but Sancho was still there, a much wronged man, and Pedro and Jose and Concho and a decrepit mule or two, all under the surly surveillance of Sergeant Feeny and half a dozen troopers whose comrades were afield chasing banditti through the deserts and mountains, while those who were detailed to remain spent long, anxious hours watching over and striving to soothe a young officer delirious from injuries to the head and resultant fever. Loring a sick man, indeed, when the surgeon reached him; but poor Blake, wearing himself down to skin and bone in fruitless chase, would gladly have been in his place.

The stage which he and his men had rushed to rescue was actually out there to the east, as Pancha had declared, "held up" among some little sand dunes, but it bore neither pa.s.sengers nor treasure, and what on earth the robbers should have detained him for nearly twenty miles east of Gila Bend--held him in the hot sun from nine in the morning until late in the afternoon, then sent him on again, only to be once more "rounded to" with a furious chorus of yells and volleyings of pistols when within only two miles of Sancho's, that bewildered Jehu could not imagine. The marvel of it was that, though the old stage was "riddled like a sieve," as he said, "and bullets flew round me like a swarm of buzzin' bees, not one of 'em more'n just nipped me and raised a blister in the skin." Indeed, even those abrasions were indistinguishable, though Jake solemnly believed in their existence. Then another queer thing! Long before the lieutenant and "his fellers" reached the imperiled vehicle all but two or three of the dozen a.s.sailants went scurrying off in the darkness, and when the cavalry came charging furiously through the gloom there was no one to oppose them. Jehu Jake couldn't even tell which way the bandits had gone--every way, he reckoned; and after careering blindly about for half an hour or so, Blake's most energetic men came drifting back and said it was useless to attempt pursuit until dawn, even though that would give the renegades six hours' start. Slowly and disgustedly Blake ordered his men to form ranks and march back to camp, when suddenly an idea struck him--Loring!

Loring, with his precious saddle-bags, had been left alone; and, calling for a set of fours to follow him, Blake clapped his spurless heels to his indignant horse's flanks and galloped for home, only to find Sancho and Pete lamenting over the prostrate, senseless and bleeding form of the engineer, whose arm was still thrown protectingly over the ravished saddle-bags.

The pocket containing that precious envelope was slashed open. The envelope and watch were gone. The record of the court in the other bag was undisturbed.

And then as he bathed his comrade's head and stanched the blood and strove to call him back to consciousness, Blake saw it all, or thought he did, and gnashed his teeth in impotent wrath. He was tricked, betrayed, yes, possibly ruined, all by a gang of miserable "greasers,"

through the medium of a pretty Mexican girl and his own wretched imbecility. There was no name Blake didn't call himself. There was nothing disreputable he did not not think of Sancho, but what could he prove? Sancho was a heavy loser. Sancho's best mules and all his fine horses, including the famous roan had been spirited away. The gang had made a wreck of the bar and a puddle of his famous liquor. Manuel, his brother, with his beloved wife and child, had fled in terror, said Sancho, else would they now be here nursing the heroic officer who had striven to defend them against such a rush of wretches. Blake drove him away with imprecations, vowing that he, Sancho, was in collusion with the gang, against which unmerited slur Sancho protested in sonorous Spanish, and to prove his innocence pointed to his bespattered bar-room, and as that failed to move the obdurate heart of the raging cavalryman, went sorrowfully back to the dark ranch whence there suddenly arose a sheet of flame and the cry that the villains had set fire to the corral before they left. For half an hour the straw and hay made a fierce blaze, and the troopers turned to and saved the ranch, as Sancho knew they would, and the actual damage was but slight. Some day Sancho would present a claim against the government for twenty times the amount and get such portion of it as was not required by the local agent and lobbying aids who rushed it through congress. Against Sancho there was no proof whatever, and when Blake rode away at dawn to take the trail of the robber band he had to invoke Sancho's a.s.sistance in looking after his stricken friend. There were hours that day when Blake could almost have blown his brains out. He, who prided himself on the field record he was making, had been outwitted, tricked, utterly and ridiculously fooled. By heaven! if horses could hold out those rascals should not go unwhipped of justice! Bitter as was his cup the previous year, this was bitterer still.

Not for ten days, after a long and fruitless chase through the Dragoon Mountains and almost into Mexico, did Blake return to the Bend, and by that time Loring was just gone, borne in the ambulance to Yuma. He had regained consciousness under the doctor's care, said old Feeny, but was sorely weak and shaken, and the doctor had gone on with him.

So ended for the time being, at least, the survey of the Gila Valley, for the surgeon at Fort Yuma coincided with the opinion of his brother from Cooke that Lieutenant Loring could perform no duty for weeks, that he should have care, rest and a sea voyage. The record of the court had been sent on by mail stage to San Francisco, and after a fortnight of total quiet at Yuma, Loring was conveyed down the Colorado to the Gulf and shipped aboard the coasting steamer for the two weeks run around Old California and up the Pacific to Yerba Buena. The very day they sailed old Turnbull came to join him on the voyage. Not a trace had been discovered of the fugitive, Captain Nevins, and such suspicious characters as Blake had overhauled were long since released for lack of evidence. Sancho held the fort as imperturbably as ever. The "family of my brother" were reported gone to Hermosillo.

Those were years in which the steamer, plying every month between the Colorado and the Bay of San Francisco, carried heavy burdens of freight, stores, and supplies into the far territory, but took little out. Gold being the monetary standard of California at the time, it cost a captain a month's pay to take that two weeks' voyage. The government paid the way into the territory in the case of officers going under orders, and once landed there a man speedily found himself too poor to think of returning. Therefore was the stout mariner who commanded the Idaho more than surprised to find two army officers on his scanty pa.s.senger list.

Turnbull he had met before; Loring was a stranger.

"Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen," said he; "you practically own the ship till we get to Guaymas. There we pick up some Mexican families going to 'Frisco, and two mighty pretty girls."

"Who are they?" asked Turnbull languidly, as he sat on the upper deck, heels lifted on the taffrail, gazing out over an apparently limitless plain, half dim vista of far-spreading sand, half of star-dotted, flawless salt water, the smoke of his cigar curling lazily aloft as the black hull rode at anchor.

"Daughters of old Ramon de la Cruz, for two that I know of, and some cousin of theirs, I believe. They came aboard on our up trip. The old man likes our tap of champagne and don't care what it costs. He has more ready cash than any Mexican I know. You're a married man, colonel, but how about the lieutenant here?"

Loring, still pallid and listless, smiled feebly and shook his head.

"Well, here's your chance, young man," said the bluff salt, unconscious of giving offense. "No time like a voyage for love making, once the girl gets her sea legs on. You ought to capture one of 'em before we're halfway to the Golden Gate. They rate 'em at two hundred thousand apiece. Don't know how long it takes a soldier to win a prize like that, but give a sailor such a show and she'd strike her colors before we sight St. Lucas. If you don't care for ducats and only want beauty, there's that little cousin. She can sing and play your soul away; give her half a chance and a good guitar."

"Who's she?" queried Turnbull, balancing his half-smoked cigar between the fingers, as he blew a fragrant cloud to the cloudless vault above.

"Didn't get the family name--Pancha they called her, a slip of a sixteen-year-old, going to school, perhaps." And the captain turned away to answer a question from his steward, leaving the two soldiers looking intently at each other, with new interest in their eyes.

"Blake's destroyer was a sixteen-year-old Pancha, wasn't she?" asked the colonel in low tone. He had no mercy whatever on Blake, and was outspoken in condemnation of what he called his idiocy.

Loring was silent a moment, then he drew a letter from an inner pocket.

It had come with Turnbull--the last news from Arizona. "Read that when you've time, colonel," said he. "Perhaps had you been in Blake's place at his age you'd have forgotten everything but the stage and the fight.

I think I should."

And as this was the longest speech Turnbull had ever heard from Loring's lips, except his arraignment of Nevins before the court, the colonel pondered over it not a little. He took the letter and read it when, an hour later, the Idaho was plowing her lazy way southward through a dull and leaden sea.

"I'm not the first man to be fooled by a slip of a girl, Loring," wrote Blake. "It isn't the first time that a woman has got the better of me, and it may not be the last. But the chagrin and misery I feel is not because I have suffered so much, but because you have, and all through my fault. I suppose you know the general has ordered me relieved and sent back to my company as no longer worthy to be called a cavalryman.

All the same, one of these days I mean to get a transfer. My legs are too long for the doughboys anyhow. Meantime, with all meekness I'll bear my burden--I deserve it; but you'll believe me when I say it isn't the punishment, the humiliation this has cost me that so weighs upon me now; it is the thought of your loss and your prostration. One of these days I may find means to show you how much I feel it. Just now I have only a hint. Last year at this time my most cherished possession was my new spring style, ten-dollar Amidon. A silk hat is as out of place in Arizona as a sunshade in Sitka, yet my striker has just unpacked it and asked, with a grin on his confounded mug, 'What'll I be doin' wid this, sor?'"

"I know! Sole leather hat box and all, it goes by buckboard to your address at division headquarters. Our heads are about of the same caliber; the main difference is that yours seems loaded. The _Alta_ says silk hats are now worn on sunny mornings. Sport mine for me, though it be of the vintage of a by-gone year. I shall not show my face in civilization till I have lived down my shame. So now for two years at least of Yuma and the consolation to be derived from the solitary study of philosophy and Shakespeare.

"Yours in meekness of spirit, "GERALD BLAKE.

"P. S.--They say that Sancho's brother's real name is Escalante. If ever you come across one of that race keep your eyes peeled."

Another day and the billows of the gulf were breaking under the Idaho's counter and hissing sternward in snowy foam, answering the rush of a strong southwest wind. It was late at evening when the black hull went reeling in toward the lights of Guaymas, and the ma.s.sive anchor, with prodigious splash dove for the sandy bottom, but late as it was the sh.o.r.e boats and lighters came pulling to the gangway stairs, and merchants, clerks and customs officers nimbly scrambled up the side, and then followed a number of pa.s.sengers, cigarette smoking and cackling about the swarming deck, and Turnbull and the Engineer hung over the rail and watched for the promised boatload of beauty and presently it came. Two or three small boats were rowed alongside, and there were glimpses of shrouded forms and there were sounds of joyous laughter and murmured gallantries of dark-eyed, dark-skinned caballeros, and the growling injunctions of, presumably, paterfamilias. And presently the ladder-like stairs were cleared, and, one after another, woman after woman was a.s.sisted up the narrow way, and came sailing into the zone of light from the polished reflectors, elder women first, then slender, sparkling-eyed damsels whose white teeth gleamed as they chatted with their escorts. Two undeniably attractive, Spanish-looking girls were objects of most a.s.siduous care. Then came a third, younger, a mere slip of a maid, with but a single cavalier, a grim, grizzled, stern-looking Mexican, who glanced sharply about as he set foot on the solid deck, and then, without a word, Loring's hand was placed on the colonel's arm, and the lieutenant's eyes said "Look!" for as the girl's face was turned for an instant toward them, there stood revealed the dusky little maid of the Gila, Blake's siren--Pancha.

CHAPTER X.

Not for many moons did that voyage of the Idaho lose first place in the memory of the bevy of pa.s.sengers who watched the lights of Guaymas fading away astern that April night. All had been bustle and gayety aboard during an hour of sheltered anchorage. Senor de la Cruz had verified the captain's verdict and opened a case of Sillery and besought all hands to drink to a joyous and prosperous voyage for his beloved daughters, their duenna and his little niece--their cousin from Hermosillo. "All hands" would have included the ship's company had the captain permitted, so hospitable was the Mexican, and indeed was intended to include every soul on the pa.s.senger list, most of them boarding the boat at Guaymas. The Senor Coronel Turnbull was formally presented to the Senor de la Cruz and by him to his charming family and their many friends, but the junior officer, on the score of recent and severe illness, had begged to be excused. Loring stood alone at the taffrail, listening in thoughtful silence to the sound of revelry within the brightly-lighted cabin, while the hoa.r.s.e screeching of the 'scape-pipe drowned all other voices and proclaimed the impatient haste of the skipper to be off. Straight, but often storm-swept, was the southerly run to La Paz--over on the desolate sh.o.r.e of the long, arid peninsula, and the green surges were rolling higher every moment and bursting in thunder into clouds of wind-driven, hissing spray on the rocks beyond the point. Wind and wave were both against their good ship, and every officer and man was at his station awaiting the order to weigh anchor. The mail sacks were aboard. The consul had gone down over the side and still Don Ramon seemed unable to part from his loved ones and the Idaho's champagne. It was the captain who had finally to put abrupt stop to the lingering leave-takings.

"I must be off at once," he said. "Come, Don Ramon, we'll take the best of care of these ladies and land them all at 'Frisco within the fortnight. Kiss 'em all around now and jump for your boat. Come, Senor--I didn't catch the name. Ah, yes, Escalante--the father of the Senorita Pancha, I suppose. No--only her uncle? Well, I'll be her uncle now," and so saying he led the way to the deck. Loring saw the lively party come surging forth from the companionway--senoras, senoritas, gray-haired men and gay young gallants. There was a moment of clasping, clinging embraces, of straining arms and lingering kisses, of crowdings and murmurings here and there, some little sobbing and many tear-wet eyes as the father was finally hurried down the ladder, and then there was further delay and shouts for Escalante, and not until then did Loring, silently watching the animated throng on the port side, become aware of two dark forms in the shadow of the deckhouse on the opposite quarter. One was that of a slender girl, and she was sobbing, she was praying in eager words not to be sent away; she was imploring pitifully to be taken back to the sh.o.r.e. Loring had studied Spanish long enough to understand almost every word, and even before he realized that he was an unwonted listener he had heard both her sobbing plea and the abrupt, almost cruel answer.

"You have no home, nor has your father. You may thank heaven for the chance to get away."

The second officer came bustling round in search of them, and, leaving the girl shrinking and sobbing on the narrow bench in the shadow, the Mexican was hurried off. Before the little boats had fairly cast adrift and the swinging steps were raised the throb of the screw was felt churning the waters of the bay, and as the steamer slowly gathered way and her bow swung gradually seaward, women and girls, kerchief waving, came drifting back along the rail, leaning far over and throwing kisses to the tossing shallops on the dark waves beneath, then gathering about the stunted flagstaff at the stern, calling loudly their parting words, all unconscious of Loring, who had stepped aside to give them room and so found himself close to little Pancha, lost to everybody in the desolation of a loneliness and grief that Loring could not see unmoved, yet could not reconcile with what he had believed of her.

Up to this moment he had heard of her only as an artful girl, the confederate of thieves and ruffians. Up to this moment he had seen her only once, the afternoon she threw herself on Blake, as Blake and he had both come to believe, to prevent his drawing revolver on the two rascals at the ranch. Yet, never had Loring heard such pathetic pleading, never had he seen child or woman in such utter abandonment of woe. Never had he thought it possible that Pancha, the siren of Sancho's ranch--cold, crafty, luring, designing, treacherous as any Carmen ever since portrayed upon the stage--could be capable of such intensity of feeling.

Drawing his uniform "cape" snugly about him, for now the sharp sea wind was whistling through the cordage and chilling his fever-weakened frame, Loring leaned against the rail, gazing back at the receding sh.o.r.es, trying not to hear the girl's sobbing. The chatter of the flock of women was incessant. Turnbull and two Guaymas merchants had joined the group, but all were intent on those harbor lights now fast glimmering to mere sparks upon the sea, and the lonely girl sat there forgotten. Not once was voice uplifted in question as to what had become of her. Every moment now the stern was lifted higher in air and then dropped deeper into the roaring, hissing waters, and women tightened their hold upon the taffrail and gave shrill little shrieks, and huddled closer together, and presently one of the elders fell back and begged to be led below, and then another, and by the time the last glimmer of the town had been hid from view and only the steady gleam of the lighthouse shone forth upon their foaming wake, the hardiest of the gay little party of the earlier evening had been carefully a.s.sisted down the bra.s.s-bound stairway, and when five bells tinkled windily somewhere forward, there, with little hands clasped about the stanchion, a shawl thrown over her head, that head pillowed in her arms, there alone in the darkness and the rush of the wind and sea, there, the very picture of heartbroken girlhood, still sat Pancha, and Loring could bear it no longer.

He was thinking over his Spanish to be sure of his words when the starboard doors of the companion way were suddenly thrown open, and in the bright light from within two burly forms stepped unsteadily forth, then lurched for the nearest support, and Loring heard the jovial tones of Turnbull:

"He must be up here--or overboard; he's nowhere below!" Then glancing sternward, "O! Loring!" he shouted, and at the name Pancha's little dark head was suddenly uplifted, and a pair of black eyes, red-rimmed and swollen with weeping, gazed, startled, toward the dark figures. For the life of him Loring could not answer the hail. Turnbull's voice and words alone had been sufficient to rouse her from a depth of woe, and to give rise to new and violent distress. She was trembling, and he could plainly see it. To answer would only announce to the frightened girl that the man whose name was sufficient to cause such evident dismay was standing there just beyond her seat, within a few paces of her, and had probably been there for some time. Quickly, watching his chance, as the Idaho careened to port, Loring shot round the deckhouse and made his way forward until he reached the companion stairs on that side, and in another moment was clinging to the outer k.n.o.b of the doorway on the other, and answering the eager questions as to where he'd been and whether he better not turn in. "Have a brandy and water, sir," urged the colonel's new companion. "Nothing like it to head off _mal de mer_.

We're in for a lively night. Half the women are sick already, and the colonel here was turning white about the gills."

"The air in the cabin was close after all that champagne. It's fresh in the staterooms, though," answered Turnbull. "Come on, Loring. It's time for you to be abed." Then in low tone he queried: "What's become of the child? Did she see you? Has she got back to sh.o.r.e?"

For answer Loring pointed to the dark figure shrinking from view half a dozen yards away toward the heaving stern. Their jovial fellow-pa.s.senger again interposed.

"Come, gentlemen, brandy and water's what we need, ain't it?" The Idaho's champagne had evidently taken effect.

"Right!" said Turnbull "Run down and order for us, quick, or it'll be too late. We'll join you in a minute." The burly merchant dove for the doorway on the next stomach-wrecking lurch, and collided with the white-capped stewardess, hastening up, with anxiety in her eyes. The two officers clung to the mizzen shrouds opposite the companionway as she emerged from the broad light into the darkness of the wind-swept deck.

It was a moment before she could distinguish objects at all. Then with practiced step she went swiftly to the crouching figure at the distant end of the long seat.

"I have learned something of her," murmured Turnbull. "That was her father's brother, Escalante, who came aboard with her. That woman at Sancho's was not her mother. _She_ has been dead for many a year. She was own sister to De la Cruz. There is something back of their sending this girl to San Francisco. Hush! Here she comes!"

With her arm thrown about the drooping girl, the stewardess came slowly leading her to the doorway. The swinging portals had slammed shut in the last plunge of the Idaho, and as the buoyant craft rose high on the next billow, Turnbull and Loring both turned to open them. The light shone full on their calm, soldierly faces as the stewardess thanked them, and the shrinking child lifted up her frightened eyes for one brief moment, glanced quickly from one to the other, then, with a low cry, slipped, limp and senseless, through the woman's arms and fell in a dark heap upon the deck.

CHAPTER XI.