and you have a fine memory. My
fate will not affect the splendid advantages which will accrue to our
country from this blunder of the dons."

"Your fate?" he demanded.

"I am now a spy confessed. But enough of that when we reach Chihuahua!
Until then we shall have no cause for complaint. We go under the escort
of Malgares, than whom there is no truer gentleman under the sky."

Pike shook his head doubtfully.

But the next day I had the great pleasure of introducing him to
Malgares, who promptly talked himself into the Lieutenant's good
graces, and entertained us that evening by ordering a _fandango_ to be
danced in our honor by the prettiest girls of the vicinity.

Of our southward journey, which we began on the ninth of March, I will
mention only that the first stage alone carried us some three hundred
and fifty miles down the valley of the Rio del Norte, to El Paso. The
most prominent features of this trip were a notorious arid desert called
the Jornada del Muerto, or Journey of the Dead Man, which we avoided by
a long detour, and two ranges of mountains to the eastward of the
river,--the glittering, snow-clad Sierra Blanca and the Sierra de los
Organos,--in whose fastnesses lurk the murderous Apaches, said by
Spaniards to be the most terrible of all Indians.

The second day south of El Paso we had to toil across a region of
shifting sand hills similar to those at the west end of our pass through
the Sangre de Cristo. The stop that evening was made at the Presidio of
Carrazal, where, for the first time since our meetings with Governor
Allencaster, we were received without the effusive hospitality to which
we had become accustomed. When Malgares introduced us to the Commandant,
the latter bowed with utmost coolness, and muttered in Spanish an
ungracious statement to the effect that Malgares was welcome to his
quarters, but that _los hereticos_ could lodge themselves, together with
their privates of infantry, in the common hovel provided for
travellers.

Malgares bowed his grandest. "_Perdone_, senor!" he replied. "I could
not bring myself to trouble your hospitality. What is good enough for my
friends is good enough for me."

Such was Malgares's stateliness of manner that the Commandant, although
his superior officer, was bowing in most apologetic fashion before our
friend had ceased speaking.

"_Perdone, hermano!_" he murmured. "I erred most deplorably in imagining
that _los senores Americanos_ came as per