only a moment. Clarence had a fine assortment
of Spanish epithets, expletives, and objurgations, gathered in his rodeo
experience at El Refugio, and laid them about him with such fervor
and discrimination that two or three mules, presumably with guilty
consciences, mistaking their direction, actually cowered against the
stockade of the corral in fear. In another moment the vacqueros had
hastily mounted, and, with Clarence at their head, were dashing down the
road towards Santa Inez. Here he spread them in open order in the grain,
on either side of the track, himself taking the road.

They did not proceed very far. For when they had reached the gradual
slope which marked the decline to the second terrace, Clarence, obeying
an instinct as irresistible as it was unaccountable, which for the last
few moments had been forcing itself upon him, ordered a halt. The casa
and corral had already sunk in the plain behind them; it was the spot
where the lasso had been thrown at him a few evenings before! Bidding
the men converge slowly towards the road, he went on more cautiously,
with his eyes upon the track before him. Presently he stopped. There
was a ragged displacement of the cracked and crumbling soil and the
unmistakable scoop of kicking hoofs. As he stooped to examine them, one
of the men at the right uttered a shout. By the same strange instinct
Clarence knew that Peyton was found!

He was, indeed, lying there among the wild oats at the right of the
road, but without trace of life or scarcely human appearance. His
clothes, where not torn and shredded away, were partly turned inside
out; his shoulders, neck, and head were a shapeless, undistinguishable
mask of dried earth and rags, like a mummy wrapping. His left boot was
gone. His large frame seemed boneless, and, except for the cerements of
his mud-stiffened clothing, was limp and sodden.

Clarence raised his head suddenly from a quick examination of the body,
and looked at the men around him. One of them was already cantering
away. Clarence instantly threw himself on his horse, and, putting spurs
to the animal, drew a revolver from his holster and fired over the man's
head. The rider turned in his saddle, saw his pursuer, and pulled up.

"Go back," said Clarence, "or my next shot won't MISS you."

"I was only going to inform the senora," said the man with a shrug and a
forced smile.

"I will do that," said Clarence grimly, driving him back with him
into the waiting