found, but not Juan. It was impossible to say what had become of
him: he had a reputation for steadiness, and it seemed unlikely that he
had taken French leave. When shearing was in full swing, a couple of
freighters came for a load of wood. After some talk, they drove off to
camp, a little way up the creek, proposing to return in the morning.
About sunset they were seen slowly approaching the shearing-shed, It
seemed that in watering their horses they had seen a man in the creek.
The small freighter imparted this information in a low voice, with some
hesitation and a deprecatory half-smile. The young and large freighter
stood aloof, with a half-smile too, but he had evidently found the
sensation disagreeably strong. This, it seemed certain, must be the lost
Juan Lucio. The next day, which was Sunday, the ranchmen and a county
officer proceeded toward the scene of the discovery. The shearers heard
of the affair, and paused in the arrangement of a horse-race. They went
in a body to the store and purchased candles, and then the motley
cavalry coursed over the prairie after the rest. They lifted Juan Lucio
from the river and bore him to a live-oak tree, where the coroner and
his jurymen debated his situation. They inclined to think that he had
come to his death by drowning. Then the Mexicans dug a grave for him,
and stood a moment round it with their candles lighted; each lifted a
handful of earth and tossed it in. Finally, they covered the
prairie-grave with brush to protect it from the coyotes, and rode slowly
home in twos and threes. About a month after, a young Mexican rode into
the ranch: he had ridden from San Anton, two hundred miles away, to put
a board cross above his father's grave, marked for him by the
store-keeper, "Juan Lucio, May, 1884."

The herders on the ranch were all Mexicans, and throughout the county it
was generally so. An old Scotchman who paused one moment to smoke a pipe
beneath the porch was a solitary instance to the contrary. He was a most
markedly benevolent-looking old man, and had about him that copious halo
of hair with which benevolence seems to delight to surround itself. He
had also about him the halo of American humor, having just been up to
answer a charge of murder, in another county, of which he was
extravagantly innocent. He carried a crook, as seemed fitting, and had
with him two sheep-dogs, one of which the kindly man assured us he had
frequently cured of a recurrent disease by cut