The heat of the tropic night and the strenuous gallop had covered El
Capitan with a lather of sweat. The reins upon his neck dripped with it.
The gauntlets with which Chesterton held them were wet. As he raised the
match-box it slipped from his fingers and fell noiselessly in the trail.
With an exclamation he dropped to the road and to his knees, and groping
in the dust began an eager search.

The sergeant caught at the rifle of the sharp-shooter, and pressed it
down.

"Look!" he whispered. "He _is_ a scout. He is searching the trail for
the tracks of our ponies. If you fire they will hear it a league away."

"But if he finds our trail and returns--"

The sergeant shook his head. "I let him pass forward," he said grimly.
"He will never return."

Chesterton pounced upon the half-buried match-box, and in a panic lest
he might again lose it, thrust it inside his tunic.

"Little do you know, El Capitan," he exclaimed breathlessly, as he
scrambled back into the saddle and lifted the pony into a gallop, "what
a narrow escape I had. I almost lost it."

Toward midnight they came to a wooden bridge swinging above a ravine in
which a mountain stream, forty feet below, splashed over half-hidden
rocks, and the stepping stones of the ford. Even before the campaign
began the bridge had outlived its usefulness, and the unwonted burden of
artillery, and the vibrations of marching men had so shaken it that it