"Make a start--make a start," chanted Davies. "Hustle! Hustle!--Charley,
get the rifle you like best and take it along. Get a couple for us."

"Is it as serious as that?" Miss Drexel queried.

Both men nodded.

"The Mexicans are tearing loose," Davies explained. "How they missed
this place I don't know." A movement in the adjoining room startled him.
"Who's that?" he cried.

"Why, Mrs. Morgan," Miss Drexel answered.

"Good heavens, Wemple, I'd forgotten _her_," groaned Davies. "How
will we ever get her anywhere?"

"Let Beth walk, and relay the lady on the nags."

"She weighs a hundred and eighty," Miss Drexel laughed. "Oh, hurry,
Martha! We're waiting on you to start!"

Muffled speech came through the partition, and then emerged a very
short, stout, much-flustered woman of middle age.

"I simply can't walk, and you boys needn't demand it of me," was her
plaint. "It's no use. I couldn't walk half a mile to save my life, and
it's six of the worst miles to the river."

They regarded her in despair.