and revolver, he fared on so rapidly that he reached the summit as the earlier streaks of dawn were outlining the far-off Sierran peaks.  Tethering his horse on a strip of tableland, he descended cautiously afoot until he reached the bench, the wall of red rock and the crumbled and dismantled furnace.  It was as he had left it that morning; there was no trace of recent human visitation.  Revolver in hand, Concho examined every cave, gully, and recess, peered behind trees, penetrated copses of buckeye and manzanita, and listened.  There was no sound but the faint soughing of the wind over the pines below him.  For a while he paced backward and forward with a vague sense of being a sentinel, but his mercurial nature soon rebelled against this monotony, and soon the fatigues of the day began to tell upon him.  Recourse to his whisky flask only made him the drowsier, until at last he was fain to lie down and roll himself up tightly in his blanket.  The next moment he was sound asleep.

His horse neighed twice from the summit, but Concho heard him not.  Then the brush crackled on the ledge above him, a small fragment of rock rolled near his feet, but he stirred not.  And then two black figures were outlined on the crags beyond.

“St-t-t!” whispered a voice.  “There is one lying beside the furnace.”  The speech was Spanish, but the voice was Wiles’s.

The other figure crept cautiously to the edge of the crag and looked over.  “It is Concho, the imbecile,” said Pedro, contemptuously.

“But if he should not be alone, or if he should waken?”

“I will watch and wait.  Go you and affix the notification.”

Wiles disappeared.  Pedro began to creep down the face of the rocky ledge, supporting himself by chemisal and brush-wood.

The next moment Pedro stood beside the unconscious man.  Then he looked cautiously around.  The figure of his companion was lost in the shadow of the rocks above; only a slight crackle of brush betrayed his whereabouts.  Suddenly Pedro flung his serape over the sleeper’s head, and then threw his powerful frame and tremendous weight full upon Concho’s upturned face, while his strong arms clasped the blanket-pinioned limbs of his victim.  There was a momentary upheaval, a spasm, and a struggle; but the tightly-rolled blanket clung to the unfortunate man like cerements.

There was no noise, no outcry, no sound of struggle.  There was nothing to be seen but the peaceful, prostrate figures of the two men darkly outlined on the ledge.  They might have been sleeping in each other’s arms.  In the black silence the stealthy tread of Wiles in the brush above was distinctly audible.

Gradually the struggles grew fainter.  Then a whisper from the crags: 

“I can’t see you.  What are you doing?”

“Watching!”

“Sleeps he?”

“He sleeps!”

“Soundly?”

“Soundly.”

“After the manner of the dead?”