flirting."

Ruth Harvey had, with quick movement, uplifted a little hand to
silence her sister, but the hand dropped, startled, and the color
rushed to her face at Wing's next words.

"Then you're almost sure to meet the lieutenant to-night or to-morrow.
He's been scouting the Santa Maria and the Christobal and is due along
here at this very moment."

And now Miss Harvey had the field to herself, for the younger sister
drew back into the dark depths of the covered wagon and spoke no more.
In ten minutes the team was rattling down the eastward slope, and
Sergeant Wing turned with a sigh, as at last even the sound of hoof
and wheel had died away. Slowly he climbed the steep and crooked trail
to their aerie at the peak. No sign of Jackson yet, no message from
the ranch, no signal-fires at Moreno's or beyond. Yet, was he right in
telling Harvey with such precious freight to push on across that open
plain when there was even rumor of Apache in the air? The loveliness
of those two dark, radiant faces, the pretty white teeth flashing in
the lantern light, the soft, silvery, girlish voices, the kindly,
cordial hand-clasp vouchsafed him by the elder, as they rolled
away,--these were things to stir the heart of any man long exiled in
this desert land. It had been his custom to spend an hour in chat with
his comrades before turning in for the night; but with Jackson still
away and Pike still plunged in gloom, with, moreover, new and stirring
emotions to investigate and analyze, Wing strolled off by himself,
passed around the rocky buttress at the point and came to the broad
ledge overlooking the eastward way to the distant range. Here a mass
of tinder, dry baked by weeks' exposure to the burning sunshine, stood