During the following night he disappeared. I
suspect that the golden nuggets which caused all our troubles were
taken from the body of a prospector who had been murdered in the
lonesome mountains of Arizona.

"We allowed our horses several days' rest to recuperate before starting
on our return trip. You saw, senor, how we arrived. Starved, sore, and
discouraged, we straggled home, jeered at and ridiculed by wiseacres
who are always ready to say, 'I told you so!' and by enemies who had no
liking for us. But the women, may Santa Barbara keep them virtuous!
they who loved their husbands truly rejoiced to welcome us home,
although we failed to bring them chispas de oro.

"As concerns the wife of Juan de Dios, and who was now his widow,
pobrecita, she was not to be found at her home. She had taken advantage
of her man's absence to decamp to the mountain of Manzana with a
strapping goat-herder, a very worthy young man, whom she loved and is
now happily free to marry."

CHAPTER VII.

THE FIGHT IN THE SAND HILLS. THE PHANTOM DOG

A number of years had I lived with my relatives when uncle found it
expedient to sell out his business. He had prospered wonderfully in his
commercial ventures. Long since had his coffers absorbed most of the
money circulating within his sphere of trade. Thereafter he accepted
commercial paper in payment for merchandise, and trade grew immensely.
Our customers soon learned how easy it was to affix their signatures to
promissory notes and to mortgages on their lands or cattle, their
horses, sheep, crops, and chattels. Of course there was a little
interest to be paid on the indebtedness, but as it was merely a
trifling one and a half per centum per month or eighteen per cent
yearly, it was of no consequence. And it was so easy to pay your debts.
Just think of it, people bought everything they needed and longed for
at the store and paid for it by simply signing their names to several
papers. When the day of payment came, they could liquidate their debts
by renewing their obligations. They simply signed a new set of similar
papers with the interest compounded and added to the original debt.
Surely Don Guillermo was conceded to stand highest in popular
estimation of any set of men who had ever come to the Rio Grande. Had
he not shown the people how to do business in a convenient and easy
manner? Under such a system nobody worried or labored very much and
life was like a pleasant dream. But ala