ce.

Don Jose's face flushed, but he returned carelessly, "And the rancho,
naturally you will not buy it now?"

"On the contrary, I shall abide by my offer," said Poindexter, quietly.

Don Jose eyed him narrowly, and then said, "Ah, we shall consider of
it."

He did consider it, and accepted the offer. With the full control of the
land, Captain Poindexter's improvements, so indefinitely postponed, were
actively pushed forward. The thick walls of the hacienda were the first
to melt away before them; the low lines of corral were effaced, and the
early breath of the summer trade winds swept uninterruptedly across the
now leveled plain to the embarcadero, where a newer structure arose. A
more vivid green alone marked the spot where the crumbling adobe walls
of the casa had returned to the parent soil that gave it. The channel
was deepened, the lagoon was drained, until one evening the magic mirror
that had so long reflected the weary waiting of the Blue Grass Penelope
lay dull, dead, lustreless, an opaque quagmire of noisome corruption
and decay to be put away from the sight of man forever. On this spot
the crows, the titular tenants of Los Cuervos, assembled in tumultuous
congress, coming and going in mysterious clouds, or laboring in thick
and writhing masses, as if they were continuing the work of improvement
begun by human agency. So well had they done the work that by the end
of a week only a few scattered white objects remained glittering on
the surface of the quickly drying soil. But they were the bones of the
missing outcast, Spencer Tucker!

*****

The same spring a breath of war swept over a foul, decaying quagmire of
the whole land, before which such passing deeds as these were blown as
vapor. It called men of all rank and condition to battle for a nation's
life, and among the first to respond were those into whose boyish
hands had been placed the nation's honor. It returned the epaulets to
Poindexter's shoulder with the addition of a double star, carried him
triumphantly to the front, and left him, at the end of a summer's
day and a hard-won fight, sorely wounded, at the door of a Blue Grass
farmhouse. And the woman who sought him out and ministered to his wants
said timidly, as she left her hand in his, "I told you I should live to
repay you."

LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER I

There was little doubt that the Lone Star claim was "played out." Not
dug out, worked out, washed