handing out cigars in the
wooden-fronted hotel, casually interviewing the town officials as to
the health of the locality and the death-rate of Toluca, acquainting
himself with the local undertaker and the lonely young doctor, and even
dropping in on the town officials and making inquiries about
main-street building lots and the need of a new hotel.

To all this amiable and erratic garrulity there seemed to be neither
direction nor significance. But in one thing the town of Toluca
agreed; the ponderous-bodied old new-comer was a bit "queer" in his
head.

A time came, however, when the newcomer announced that he could wait no
longer for his belated camp-partner. With his pack-mule and a pick and
shovel he set out, late one afternoon, for the Buenavista Camp. Yet by
nightfall, for some strange reason, any one traveling that lonely trail
might have seen him returning towards Toluca. He did not enter the
town, however, but skirted the outer fringe of sparsely settled houses
and guardedly made his way to a close-fenced area, in which neither
light nor movement could be detected. This silent place awakened in
him no trace of either fear or repugnance. With him he carried his
pick and shovel, and five minutes later the sound of this pick and
shovel might have been heard at work as the ponderous-bodied man
sweated over his midnight labor. When he had dug for what seemed an
interminable length of time, he tore away a layer of pine boards and
released a double row of screw-heads. Then he crouched low down in the
rectangular cavern which he had fashioned with his spade, struck a
match, and peered with a narrow-eyed and breathless intentness at what
faced him there.

One glance at that tragic mass of corruption was enough for him. He
replaced the screw-heads and the pine boards. He took up his shovel
and began restoring the earth, stolidly tramping it down, from time to
time, with his great weight.

When his task was completed he saw that everything was orderly and as
he had found it. Then he returned to his tethered packmule and once
more headed for the Buenavista Camp, carrying with him a discovery
which made the night air as intoxicating as wine to his weary body.

Late that night a man might have been heard singing to the stars,
singing in the midst of the wilderness, without rhyme or reason. And
in the midst of that wilderness he remained for another long day and
another long night, as though solitude were n