. Let the packs take care of themselves.
Send Sergeant Lee in here to me again." Then with trembling hands the
young officer turned his attention to his other patients. Severing
the cords with his hunting-knife, he freed them from their bonds, then
dashed water over their scorched and blackened faces, meantime keeping
up a running fire of questions. Between his sobs, the young civilian
told him that the outlaws had hitched in both teams and taken also the
spare mules and the buck-board. They had lifted the Harvey girls into
the Concord, the safe and Pasqual Morales into the paymaster's
ambulance, while the wounded men and Moreno's people probably were put
on the open wagon. Then they had all driven furiously away to the
south, leaving only two or three men to complete the work at the
ranch. Finding the paymaster and sergeant well-nigh dead, they had
contented themselves with binding and leaving them to their fate, to
be cremated when the roof of the shed came down. Then one of the gang
whom he had once befriended in Tucson pleaded with his fellows to
spare the life of the only one of the party left to tell the tale.
Pasqual and the Mexicans were gone. Those who remained were Americans,
judging by their speech, though two of them were still masked. "My
name is Woods," said the poor fellow. "But that bandit had to beg
hard. They were ready to murder anybody connected with the defence,
for Ramon was killed and Pasqual shot through the leg. I did that,
though they didn't know it. They bound and left me here, but made me
swear I would tell Harvey and his friends when they got back that it
was no use following; they had thirty armed men and three hours'
start. They never thought of any one else getting here first. Oh, my
God! who can break it to Mr. Harvey when he does come?"

And then Sergeant Lee came hurrying back, one or two men with him, and
together they labored to restore to consciousness the paymaster,
breathing feebly, and old Feeny, bleeding from a gash in the back of
the skull and a bullet-hole through the body. For nearly quarter of an
hour their efforts were vain. Meantime Drummond, well-nigh mad over
the delay, was pacing about like a caged tiger. He set two of the men
to work to hitch the bewildered little burros to the well-wheel and
get up several huge bucketfuls of water against the coming of the
troop. He ordered others to rub down his handsome sorrel, Chester, and
the mounts of two of the advanced party. A