"Ay, ay, sir!" answered Frank.
"Get ready to come on board! Below, there—ready with the gang-plank! Lower away!"
Down came the plank, and a joyous group of friends walked down to the shore to greet the boys and the soldier.
A little time afterwards the boy sergeants led their ponies on board, and Private Tom Clary escorted the prisoners. The Cocopah cleared away and paddled back to the La Paz side, where Texas Dick and Juan Brincos were turned over to the civil authorities, and Sancho and Chiquita to the escort in Mr. Gray's corral.
Three days later the boys and I took leave of Mr. Baldwin, who was now in charge of the government store-house, and accompanied by Mr. Gray, started for Fort Whipple. Hanging under the hind axle of the ambulance was a ten-gallon keg, and inside was another. We left La Paz at six in the evening and reached Tyson's Wells at ten. Remaining there until four o'clock the next afternoon, we filled the kegs with water, and drove all night, arriving at Hole-in-the-Plain at sunrise. Remaining all day, the animals grazing without water, we made a second night's drive to Black Tanks; and then a third to Date Creek, where we resumed travelling by daylight. It is an old army custom to make night drives in warm weather over long distances between water. The nights of the far West being invariably cool, the strain is less on man and beast.
Two days after our arrival at Whipple the mail brought an order from the Department Commander relieving me from duty in Arizona that I might comply with an order from the War Department detailing me as Military Professor at Oldenu Military Academy. The same mail brought a letter from Colonel Burton, directing that his sons accompany me to San Francisco.
As rapidly as possible preparations were made for our departure. It chanced that Tom Clary's term of enlistment terminated a week before we were to start, and we were glad enough to give so worthy and useful a man free transportation in our ambulance to the coast, and by steamer to San Francisco.
In those days there were no overland railroads. After a two weeks' holiday at the Presidio, the boys, Clary, Vic, and I took the steamer for Panama and New York, Colonel Burton paying Tom's passage in the steerage. More than that; through my influence Clary was appointed to a vacant janitorship in the academy, and when Manuel Perea and Sapoya and the four ponies arrived the following spring he had the care of the animals.