"You can think of nothing else in the way of precaution, Loring?" he presently asked, as he threw himself down beside him, puffing at his little brier-root.
"Nothing."
"It would take a nervier gang than Arizona owns to try and rob this outfit," and Blake looked complacently around among the shadowy forms of the troopers flitting about the bivouac.
"We are all right so long as we've got you and your men," said Loring quietly.
"Well, there's no order that can come in time to take us away from you, old man. I'll send one platoon ahead at daybreak to camp halfway, and they'll be fresh to ride into Yuma with you Sunday morning."
Loring nodded appreciatively.
From the open doorway of the ranch came the faint clink of glasses and the murmurous flow of voices. Presently the boom of the veterans' jovial laugh swelled the "concourse of sweet sounds," and Blake stirred uneasily.
"Wonder what that old thief is giving them," muttered he. "Uncle Billy's telling his bear story."
Quarter of an hour passed. The infant moon had sunk below the westward horizon. The sounds of joviality increased, and Blake's mouth watered. "Damn those heartless profligates!" he muttered. "Reckon I'll have to go and reconnoiter. You don't mind being left to your own reflections, Loring?"
"Go ahead," said Loring, and so presently the tall, shadowy form of "the longest-legged officer in Arizona" was dimly seen stalking forth from the gloom of the willows and threading its way through the open starlight toward the bright and welcoming doorways of the ranch. Only one or two of the usual loungers had been seen about the premises since the cavalry came in. Sancho and his brother were practically destitute of other guests than the officers whom they were entertaining. Slowly and more slowly did the lieutenant saunter, open-eared, toward the scene of revelry. More than half the distance had he gone when, suddenly from another and smaller clump of willows below the ranch there came floating on the still night, faint and cautious, the musical tinkle of a guitar, and then soft, luring, yet hardly sweet or silvery, the voice of a girl was timidly uplifted in song. Blake knew it at once. "The daughter of my brother" was out there in the willows, a most unusual thing. Blake remembered how her eyes had spoken to him twice before, how she had thrown herself upon him the night of Higgins' arrest. Could it be, was it possible, that she was signaling to him now? Much as his curiosity and interest had previously been aroused by the occasional peeps he had had at this attractive little Mexican girl, the events of that night had intensified them. True, it was a moment of thrilling excitement. Higgins, cornered like a rat, had drawn and fired, not with either aim or idea of shooting his accuser, but in the hope of so startling both officers that in the confusion he could leap to the back doorway and escape. Loring's imperturbable nerve and practiced fist had defeated that scheme and laid the deserter low, and Higgins was now languishing at Yuma, awaiting trial on triple charges. But Blake for a second or two had felt the clasp of soft arms about him, the wild flutter of a maiden heart much below his own, and Blake was human. Somewhere he had met that slender girl before. Twice he had danced at the bailes in Tucson, and once attended a masquerade, where for nearly an hour he had enjoyed the partnership of and been tantalized by a maid of just about the stature of this dark-eyed "daughter of my brother." Blake knew as well as does the reader that this was no time for philandering, and had been told, but not yet taught, the wisdom of keeping well away from the damsels who, like the sirens of old, twanged the vibrating strings and sang their luring songs. Why should she have flung herself between him and the desperadoes at that perilous moment and thrown her arms around him unless—unless she was the girl he had been making love to, in broken Spanish, during the fiesta at Tucson? He would not have let Loring know where he was going, or why, for a good deal. But once away from him, Blake was alone with no one to interpose objection, and—he went. In three minutes he had made his cautious way to the westward willows, and his heart began beating in spite of his determination to be guarded and even suspicious, for there sat the little señorita alone. That fact in itself should have opened his eyes, and would have done so a year or two later, but Blake was still a good deal of a boy, and in another moment he stepped quickly to her side and almost swept the ground with his broad-brimmed scouting hat, as he bowed low before her. Instantly the song ceased, the guitar dropped with an æolian whine upon the sand, and as Blake stooped to raise it she sprang to her feet—a half-stifled cry upon her lips. With smiling self-assurance he bowed low again as he would have restored the instrument to the little hands that were half-upraised as though to warn him back; but she began coyly retreating from the bench on which she had been seated, and he quickly followed, murmuring protest and reassurance in such Spanish as he could command, declaring he had never yet had opportunity to thank her for a deed of daring that perhaps had saved his life (he knew it hadn't—the long-legged, nimble-tongued reprobate), and trembling, timorous, sweetly hesitant she lingered; she even let him seize her hand and only faintly strove to draw it away. She began even to listen to his pleading. She shyly hung her pretty head and coyly turned away and furtively peeped across the starlit level toward the ranch, where two dark forms serape-shrouded, were lurking at the corner of the corral. They had come crouching forward a dozen yards when something, some sudden sound, drove them back to shelter, and in the next moment Blake heard it, and the girl, too, for like a frightened fawn she darted away and went scurrying to the rear entrance of the ranch, leaving him to confront and hail two horsemen, "Gringos," evidently, who came loping in on the Yuma trail, and at his voice the foremost leaped from saddle and called: