“After the fashion of the dead!”

The last tremor had ceased.  Pedro rose as Wiles descended.

“All is ready,” said Wiles; “you are a witness of my placing the notifications?”

“I am a witness.”

“But of this one?” pointing to Concho.  “Shall we leave him here?”

“A drunken imbecile,—­why not?”

Wiles turned his left eye on the speaker.  They chanced to be standing nearly in the same attitude they had stood the preceding night.  Pedro uttered a cry and an imprecation, “Carramba!  Take your devil’s eye from me!  What see you?  Eh,—­what?”

“Nothing, good Pedro,” said Wiles, turning his bland right cheek to Pedro.  The infuriated and half-frightened ex-vaquero returned the long knife he had half-drawn from its sheath, and growled surlily:  “Go on then!  But keep thou on that side, and I will on this.”  And so, side by side, listening, watching, distrustful of all things, but mainly of each other, they stole back and up into those shadows from which they might like evil spirits have been poetically evoked.

A half hour passed, in which the east brightened, flashed, and again melted into gold.  And then the sun came up haughtily, and a fog that had stolen across the summit in the night arose and fled up the mountain side, tearing its white robes in its guilty haste, and leaving them fluttering from tree and crag and scar.  A thousand tiny blades, nestling in the crevices of rocks, nurtured in storms and rocked by the trade winds, stretched their wan and feeble arms toward Him; but Concho the strong, Concho the brave, Concho the light-hearted spake not nor stirred.

CHAPTER IV

WHO TOOK IT

There was persistent neighing on the summit.  Concho’s horse wanted his breakfast.

This protestation reached the ears of a party ascending the mountain from its western face.  To one of the party it was familiar.

“Why, blank it all, that’s Chiquita.  That d——­d Mexican’s lying drunk somewhere,” said the President of the B. M. Co.

“I don’t like the look of this at all,” said Dr. Guild, as they rode up beside the indignant animal.  “If it had been an American, it might have been carelessness, but no Mexican ever forgets his beast.  Drive ahead, boys; we may be too late.”

In half an hour they came in sight of the ledge below, the crumbled furnace, and the motionless figure of Concho, wrapped in a blanket, lying prone in the sunlight.

“I told you so,—­drunk!” said the President.

The Doctor looked grave, but did not speak.  They dismounted and picketed their horses.  Then crept on all fours to the ledge above the furnace.  There was a cry from Secretary Gibbs, “Look yer.  Some fellar has been jumping us, boys.  See these notices.”

There were two notices on canvas affixed to the rock, claiming the ground, and signed by Pedro, Manuel, Miguel, Wiles, and Roscommon.