minutes.--Drop those cards now, you men; you should have been sleeping
as I told you, so as to be ready for work to-night."

"Shure we don't go to-night, sergeant?"

"Who says that?" demanded Feeny, quickly, whirling upon his
subordinates. The corporal looked embarrassed and turned to Moreno for
support. Moreno, profoundly calm, was as profoundly oblivious.

"Moreno there," began Murphy, finding himself compelled to speak.

"I?" gravely, courteously protested the Mexican, with deprecatory
shrug of his shoulders and upward lift of eyebrow. "I? What know I? I
do but say the Corporal Donovan is not come. How know I you go not out
to-night?"

"Neither you nor the likes of you knows," was Feeny's stern retort.
"We go when we will and no questions asked. As for you, Murphy, you be
ready, and it's me you'll ask, not any outsider, when we go. I've had
enough to swear at to-day without you fellows playing off on me. Go or
no go--no liquor, mind you. The first man I catch drinking I'll tie by
the thumbs to the back of the ambulance, and he'll foot it to
Stoneman."

No words were wasted in remonstrance or reply. These were indeed "the
days of the empire" in Arizona,--days soon after the great war of the
rebellion, when men drank and swore and fought and gambled in the
rough life of their exile, but obeyed, and obeyed without question,
the officers appointed over them. These were the days when veteran
sergeants like Feeny--men who had served under St. George Cooke and