"Well, then, what in blazes are you staring at?"
"How can I tell ye till I find out?" is the Hibernian reply, and this is enough to send the corporal on a climb. Drummond at the moment is again kneeling by Wing, who has but just awakened from a fitful sleep, Miss Harvey being the first to hear him stir and sigh. Ruth and her sister, too, seem about to withdraw, but Wing, whose voice is weak now, begs them to remain.
"Has anything been seen yet—back on the trail—of the Stoneman party?" he asks.
"No, sergeant," replies Drummond; "but remember that we can only see some six miles of the trail, after that it is lost in that tortuous ravine down which we rode on the chase. Walsh is up there on lookout, and I'll ask if he can see anything now;" and calling to one of the men, Drummond bids him inquire. All eagerly await the reply.
At last it comes,—
"No dust on the back track, sir, but something that looks like it far to the south. We think it may be some of our fellows coming back, but it is too faint and far to make it out yet."
The corporal is the speaker, his resonant voice contrasting strongly with the feeble accents of his immediate superior, the wounded sergeant.
"Then I have something that must be told you, lieutenant, something Miss Harvey already has an inkling of, for she has met and known my dear mother. If this pain continue to increase, and fever set in, I may be unable to tell it later. Some of the men thought I had enlisted under an alias, lieutenant, but they were wrong. Wing is my rightful name. My father was chief officer of the old 'Flying Cloud' in the days when American clipper ships beat the world. The gold fever seized him, though, and he quit sailing and went to mining in the early days of San Francisco, and there when I was a little boy of ten he died, leaving mother with not many thousand dollars to take care of herself and me. 'You will have your brother to help you' were words he spoke the last day of his life, and even then I noted how little comfort mother seemed to find in that fact. It was only a few months after father's death that Uncle Fred, from being an occasional visitor, came to living with us all the time, made his home there, though seldom within doors night or day. He was several years younger than mother. He was the youngest, it seems, of the family, 'the baby,' and had been petted and spoiled from earliest infancy. I soon found why he came. Mother was often in tears, Uncle Fred always begging or demanding money. The boys at school twitted me about my gambler uncle, though I've no doubt their fathers gambled as much as he. These were just before the early days of the great war that sprang up in '61 and that we boys out on the Pacific coast only vaguely understood. Sometimes Uncle Fred came home drunk and I could hear him threatening poor mother, and things went from bad to worse, and one night when I was just thirteen I was awakened from sound sleep by her scream. In an instant I flew to her room, catching up as I ran father's old bowie-knife that always hung by my door. In the dim light I saw her lying by the bedside, a man bending over and choking her. With all my strength I slashed at him just as he turned. I meant to kill, but the turn saved him. He sprang to his feet with an oath and cry and rushed to the wash-stand. I had laid Uncle Fred's cheek open from ear to chin.
"It was long before mother could check the flow of the blood. It sobered him, of course, and made him piteously weak. For days after that she nursed and cared for him, but forbade my entering the room. Men came to see him,—insisted on seeing him,—and she would send me to the bank for gold and pay their claims and bid them go. At last he was able to walk out with that awful slash on his thin white face. Once then he met and cursed me, but I did not mind, I had acted only to save mother. How could I suppose that her assailant was her own brother? Then finally with sobs and tears she told me the story, how he had been their mother's darling, how wild and reckless was his youth, how her mother's last thought seemed to be for him, and how on her knees she, my own mother, promised to take care of poor Freddie and shield him from every ill, and this promise she repeated to me, bidding me help her keep it and to conceal as far as I could her brother's misdeeds. For a few months things went a little better. Uncle Fred got a commission in a California regiment towards the close of the war and was sent down to Arizona. Then came more tears and trouble. I couldn't understand it all then, but I do now. Uncle Fred was gambling again, drawing on her for means to meet his losses. The old home went under the hammer, and we moved down to San Diego, where father had once invested and had left a little property. And then came the news that Uncle Fred had been dismissed, all on account of drink and gambling and misappropriation of funds. Miss Harvey knows all about this, lieutenant, for mother told her and had reason to. And next came forgery, and we were stranded. We heard that he had gone after that with a wagon-train to Texas. I got employment on a ranch, and then mother married again, married a man who had long befriended us and who could give her a comfortable home. She is now Mrs. Malcomb Bland, of San Francisco, and Mr. Bland offered to take me into his store, but I loved the open air and independence. Mr. Bland and Mr. Harvey had business relations, and when Uncle Fred was next heard from he was 'starving to death,' he said, 'actually dying.' He wrote to mother from Yuma. Mother wired me to go to him at once, and I did. He was considerably out at elbows, but in no desperate need yet. Just then Mr. Harvey offered him a good salary to take charge of his freight-train. We all knew how that must have been brought about, and I felt that it would only be a matter of time when he would rob his new employer. He did; was discharged, but Mr. Bland made the amount good, and the matter was hushed up. Then he drove stage awhile and then disappeared. Mother has written me time and again to find him or find out what has become of him, and I promised I would leave no stone unturned. Tell her I have kept my word. Tell her I found him. But tell her for God's sake to think no more of him. Tell her not to strive to find him or to ask what he is or even where he is beyond that he has gone to Sonora."
"Lieutenant," said Patterson, suddenly appearing at the opening, "could you step here a moment?"