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Updated: June 28, 2025
"Geordie, mon, but it's glad I am to see ye!" was the whispered welcome. "Softly, now, there's others here." Quickly they were served with steaks, scrambled eggs, toast, tea or coffee, as they chose, and two at least were hungry, yet Geordie, brimful of eagerness to put his plan into execution, could hardly spare time to eat. Yes, Ross knew Nolan and Feeny of old.
I'll bate back those blackguards yet," muttered Feeny, as he took a quick snap shot at some dim object flitting across the plain and sent another into the darkness, aiming vaguely where he could hear the thud of horses' hoofs.
"I have to borrow the lamp a moment, Fan," he whispered. "Now lie still. We may have to stand a siege awhile until father can reach us." Two minutes more, bending low and with his last cartridge crammed into the chamber of his carbine, Feeny turned to make a run for the ranch.
In vain had Feeny begged him to think of his money, to remember that outlaws would resort to any trick to rob him of his guard, and might have even overpowered Wing and his party and then lighted the beacon. The chain of evidence, the straight story told by his morning visitor, the awful news contained in the pencilled note brought in by Mullan, were considerations too potent to be slighted.
In fifteen minutes, with four pack-mules ambling behind, away they went into the darkness, and all that was left to man the ranch and defend the government treasury against all comers was the phlegmatic but determined paymaster, his physically wrecked but devoted clerk, Sergeant Feeny, raging at heart but full of fight, and a half-breed packer named Pedro; the two senseless and drunken troopers were of course of no use to anybody.
But within the ranch there went up a wail of terror and dismay, for Ramon Morales, shot through the brain, was stretched lifeless at the feet of Moreno and his shuddering wife. And then Feeny, unscathed, leaped inside the bar-room. "Now for it, men! Drag in those two drunken brute bastes," he cried, laying hold of Mullan's limp carcass. "Lug in wan of them water-jars.
Harvey about as good as dead, old Feeny dying, most like, the clerk and Mullan and some other trooper of the escort burned to ashes in that hell-hole there, and Donovan and this last one some of our fellows think is Flynn, from 'F' troop shot to death. It's worse than Apache, lieutenant, and there'll be no use trying to restrain our fellows when we catch the blackguards."
Any minute now they'll be coming. First thing, run these two wagons around to the corral, so as to clear the approaches. There mustn't be anything behind which they can hide or take shelter." And, laying hold of the pole while willing hands manned the spokes, Feeny soon had the Concord and the weather-beaten ambulance safely out of the way.
Here by the hub of the Gatling's wheel stands old Feeny, close at the elbow of dark-faced Drummond. "C" troop's first platoon "mans" the Gatling gun, and under its old leader of the Arizona campaigns "leads the procession" into the "Garden City" of the ante-bellum days.
There in that wretched little green safe were locked up thousands enough of dollars to tempt all the outlawry of the Occident to any deed of desperation that might lead to the capture of the booty, and with Donovan and his party away Feeny saw he had but half a dozen men for defence.
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