art," he said hurriedly, "and if I could
get across the mountain without lying over at the summit, it would be a
day gained."

Patterson arose without a word, filled a flask of spirit, handed it to
his friend, and silently led the way through the slowly falling rain and
the now settled darkness. The mustang was quickly secured and saddled, a
heavy poncho afforded Tucker a disguise as well as a protection from the
rain. With a few hurried, disconnected words, and an abstracted air, he
once more shook his friend's hand and issued cautiously from the corral.
When out of earshot from the house he put spurs to the mustang, and
dashed into a gallop.

To intersect the mountain road he was obliged to traverse part of the
highway his wife had walked that afternoon, and to pass within a mile of
the casa where she was. Long before he reached that point his eyes were
straining the darkness in that direction for some indication of the
house which was to him familiar. Becoming now accustomed to the even
obscurity, less trying to the vision than the alternate light and
shadow of cloud or the full glare of the moonlight, he fancied he
could distinguish its low walls over the monotonous level. One of
those impulses which had so often taken the place of resolution in his
character suddenly possessed him to diverge from his course and approach
the house. Why, he could not have explained. It was not from any feeling
of jealous suspicion or contemplated revenge--that had passed with the
presence of Patterson; it was not from any vague lingering sentiment for
the woman he had wronged--he would have shrunk from meeting her at that
moment. But it was full of these and more possibilities by which he
might or might not be guided, and was at least a movement towards
some vague end, and a distraction from certain thoughts he dared not
entertain and could not entirely dismiss. Inconceivable and inexplicable
to human reason, it might have been acceptable to the Divine omniscience
for its predestined result.

He left the road at a point where the marsh encroached upon the meadow,
familiar to him already as near the spot where he had embarked from
the Chinaman's boat the day before. He remembered that the walls of the
hacienda were distinctly visible from the tules where he had hidden all
day, and he now knew that the figures he had observed near the building,
which had deterred his first attempts at landing, must have been his
wife and his friend.