A Trooper Galahad

legraph wire then to connect it with the distant head-quarters of the department. If there had been it would

o the valley of the San Saba, and on the way had to twist and turn through defiles of the range of hills, where more than a dozen times Indians and outlaws had defied the little detachments of cavalry scouting after them. The worst part of the pass lay some twenty miles beyond the stage station at Crockett Springs. Neither Indians nor outlaws, to be sure, had been heard of in that neighborhood for several months, but that proved nothing. It was easy for the latter to sweep from their supposed fastnesses in the Apache range to the west, and, issuing from the Wild Rose Pass, to water miles below the springs and then line the rocks in the heart of the San Saba Pass, without a trooper being the wiser. Forty cavalrymen, as Lawrence knew, would be the major's escort from the camp on the Rio San Saba beyond the range. Forty men disciplined

day morning, he had still some sixty miles to traverse before he could get to Crockett, rest and bait his men and horses, pick up Cramer's troop there ca

and his protectors, and escort them back in safety. That problem presented no great difficulty; but what Frazier wanted and Brooks wanted and everybody, presumably, wanted was that the outlaws should be caught in the act and be punished then and there. The question was how to catch them in the act without being themselves discovered, and before the gang had had time to inflict much dama

yes and muddled head rode solus in front of the leading troop, his one lieutenant, Mr. Bralligan, being reported by Dr. Collabone's assistant as sick in quarters, which indeed he was, with a lump the size of an apple on the side of his head, and another, apparently the heft and density of a six-pounder cannon-ball, rolling about inside of it.

ride up to the major and report, then fall back and r

?" asked Brayton, half hesitatingly,

nswer. "Yet those two have so much to leave." And Brayton,

, leaving Brayton with the troop, Barclay cut across the chord of a long arc in the trail and reined up alongside the major. The command at the moment was moving at a

ack a hundred yards or so, divide the tro

It's eight o'clock," he continued, glancing at his watch. Barclay turned in saddle and signalled with his gauntlet, whereat Brayton slack

d side by side, Lawrence eying his successor with keen yet pleasant interest. He had been hearing all manner of good of him during the wakeful watches of the night, and was manfully fighting against the faint yet irrepressible feeling of jealous dislike with which broader and better men than he have had to struggle on being supplanted. Do what he might to battle aga

re Oirish and Oirish," as one of their most appreciative and broad-minded exponents, Private Terence Mulvaney, has told us; and it galled the veteran dragoon to see his junior in rank bidden to ride even for the moment at the head of the swiftly moving column. So, reckless of the fact that his individu

ght divide into sections, as 'D' troop has done, and keep fifty ya

, bedad, had instigated the measure for the comfort of his men. That was enough to damn it in the eyes of the old dragoon. The answer was shouted, too, with double intent. Mullane desired Barclay to hear what he

"So ho, my Celtic friend," thought he, as he saw that two canteens were swung on the off side of Mullane's saddle, one at the cantle under the rolled blanket, the

tain," he smilingly answered, "but I have to call for unusual exertion to-day, and the fresher they are to-nigh

his shoulder to his loyal henchman, and the

nd southwest, the land seemed to fall away in even longer, lazier billows, until it flattened out into a broad valley, drained by some far-distant, invisible stream. Only to the west and northwest, over their right shoulders, was there gleam of something brighter. The faint blue outline of the far-away Apache range was still capped in places by glistening white, while straight away to the northwest, back of and beyond the dim dust-cloud through which the swallow-tailed guidons were peeping, hovered over their winding trail the bold and commanding heights, Fort Worth's shelter against the keen

oks halted for brief ten minutes' rest, the resetting of saddles, etc., and now, after fifteen minutes' lively jog, he signals "walk" again, and glances back to watch the march of his men. By this time the column is long drawn out. The two troops are split up into four sections each, riding a little over a dozen men in a bunch; by this means they a

l we make Croc

r five-thirty," is

n do it in tw

he conviction that is growing on him as he somewhat warily glances over his companion, that what "L" might do its captain won't do if he consults that can

n an Irishman has a man he is jealous of to talk about and whiskey to start him, he need

s he, with a leering wink at the leading horseman. "Is he larn

ch his words, so distinctly that the captain cannot fail to, "there are things of more value in a trade than the tricks of it that you seem to know so well. You can learn more from Captain Barclay that is wo

ising that white-livered parson! Whurroo! Mullane at the moment could have flung commission and conscience to the wind, everything but that ca

ot be ridin' wid his betthers," he begins, "