Now the fast-falling sun flung its banner of gorgeous colours across the western sky.  Immediately a wonderful light played upon the fleecy cumuli gathered in the upper heavens of the east and changed them from pearl to brilliant scarlet.  For a moment, also, the purple hills became wonderful piles of dull gold and copper; a moment more and the magic hand of the King of Day was withdrawn.

In front of them now, dark, gloomy and threatening rose Cloudy Mountain, from which the Mining Camp took its name; and on a plateau near its base the camp itself could plainly be seen.  It consisted of a group of miners’ cabins set among pines, firs and manzaneta bushes with two larger pine-slab buildings, and scattered around in various places were shafts, whose crude timber-hoists appeared merely as vague outlines in the fast-fading light.  The distance to the camp from where they stood was not over three miles as the crow flies, but it appeared much less in the rarefied atmosphere.

As the two bandits stood on the edge of the precipice looking across and beyond the intervening gulch or ravine, here and there a light twinkled out from the cabins and, presently, a much stronger illumination shot forth from one of the larger and more pretentious buildings.  Castro was quick to call his master’s attention to it.

“There—­that place with the light is The Palmetto Hotel!” he exclaimed.  “And over there—­the one with the larger light is The Polka Saloon!” For even as he spoke the powerful kerosene lamp of The Polka Saloon, flanked by a composition metal reflector, flashed out its light into the gloom enveloping the desolate, ominous-looking mountains.

Johnson regarded this building long and thoughtfully.  Then his eyes made out a steep trail which zigzagged from The Polka Saloon up the barren slopes of the mountain until it reached a cabin perched on the very top, the steps and porch of which were held up by poles made of trees.  There, also, a light could be seen, but dimly.  It was a strange place for anyone to erect a dwelling-place, and he found himself wondering what manner of person dwelt there.  Of one thing he was certain:  whoever it was the mountains were loved for themselves, for no mere digger of gold would think of erecting a habitation in view of those strange, vast, and silent heights!

And as he meditated thus, he perceived that the far off Sierras were forming a background for a sinuous coil of smoke from the cabin.  For some time he watched it curling up into the great arch of sky.  It was as if he were hypnotised by it and, in a vague, shadowy way, he had a sense of being connected, somehow, with the little cabin and its recluse.  Was this feeling that he had a premonition of danger?  Was this a moment of foreboding and distrust of the situation yet to be revealed?  For like most venturesome men he always had a moment before every one of his undertakings in which his instinct either urged him forward or held him back.