"Oh, at least six or eight miles down, sir; down beyond where you met them yesterday."
"How about our trail? Anybody in sight there?"
"Nobody, sir, not even a thing, not even a whiff of dust."
"Very well. Keep on the alert. It's good to know that all the Apaches are not around us yet. Neither bullet nor arrow can get down here so long as we man the rocks above. I'll be out in a moment."
Then once more he kneels by Wing.
"Lieutenant, did you ever see a girl behave with greater bravery? Do you know what she has undergone?—Miss Harvey, I mean?"
"Both are behaving like heroines, Wing, and I think I am beginning to see through this plot at last."
"Never let mother know it,—promise me, sir,—but when Harvey discharged him—my uncle, I mean—he swore he'd be revenged on the old man, and 'twas he——"
"The double-dyed villain! I know, I understand now, Wing; you needn't tell me. He has been in the pay of the Morales gang for months. He enlisted so as to learn all the movements of officers and scouting-parties. He enlisted under his benefactor's name. He has forged that, too, in all probability, and then, deserting, it was he who sought to carry away these precious girls, and he came within an ace of succeeding. By the Eternal, but there will be a day of reckoning for him if ever 'C' troop runs foul of him again! No wonder you couldn't sleep, poor fellow, for thinking of that mother. This caps the climax of his scoundrelism. Where,—when did you see him last?—since he enlisted?"
But now Wing's face is again averted. He is covering it with his arms.