ridge. But what was his
astonishment on arriving to find the place deserted of man, mule,
and camp equipage. Concho called aloud. Only the echoing rocks grimly
answered him. Was it a trick? Concho tried to laugh. Ah--yes--a good
one,--a joke,--no--no--they HAD deserted him. And then poor Concho bowed
his head to the ground, and falling on his face, cried as if his honest
heart would break.

The tempest passed in a moment; it was not Concho's nature to suffer
long nor brood over an injury. As he raised his head again his eye
caught the shimmer of the quicksilver,--that pool of merry antic metal
that had so delighted him an hour before. In a few moments Concho was
again disporting with it; chasing it here and there, rolling it in his
palms and laughing with boy-like glee at its elusive freaks and fancies.
"Ah, sprightly one,--skipjack,--there thou goest,--come here. This
way,--now I have thee, little one,--come, muchacha,--come and kiss me,"
until he had quite forgotten the defection of his companions. And even
when he shouldered his sorry pack, he was fain to carry his playmate
away with him in his empty leathern flask.

And yet I fancy the sun looked kindly on him as he strode cheerily down
the black mountain side, and his step was none the less free nor light
that he carried with him neither the brilliant prospects nor the crime
of his late comrades.

CHAPTER III

WHO CLAIMED IT

The fog had already closed in on Monterey, and was now rolling, a white,
billowy sea above, that soon shut out the blue breakers below. Once
or twice in descending the mountain Concho had overhung the cliff and
looked down upon the curving horse-shoe of a bay below him,--distant yet
many miles. Earlier in the afternoon he had seen the gilt cross on the
white-faced Mission flare in the sunlight, but now all was gone. By
the time he reached the highway of the town it was quite dark, and he
plunged into the first fonda at the wayside, and endeavored to forget
his woes and his weariness in aguardiente. But Concho's head ached, and
his back ached, and he was so generally distressed that he bethought him
of a medico,--an American doctor,--lately come into the town, who had
once treated Concho and his mule with apparently the same medicine, and
after the same heroic fashion. Concho reasoned, not illogically, that if
he were to be physicked at all he ought to get the worth of his
money. The grotesque extravagance of life, of fruit and vegeta