it of
us,--the four! You shall come to our camp and shall melt it,--and show
the silver, and--enough! Come!" and in his feverishness he clutched the
hand of his companion as if to lead him forth at once.

"What are you going to do with your mule?" said the stranger.

"True, Holy Mother,--what, indeed?"

"Look yer," said the stranger, with a grim smile, "she won't stray far,
I'll be bound. I've an extra pack mule above here; you can ride on her,
and lead me into camp, and to-morrow come back for your beast."

Poor honest Concho's heart sickened at the prospect of leaving behind
the tired servant he had objurgated so strongly a moment before, but
the love of gold was uppermost. "I will come back to thee, little
one, to-morrow, a rich man. Meanwhile, wait thou here, patient
one,--Adios!--thou smallest of mules,--Adios!"

And, seizing the stranger's hand, he clambered up the rocky ledge until
they reached the summit. Then the stranger turned and gave one sweep of
his malevolent eye over the valley.

Wherefore, in after years, when their story was related, with the
devotion of true Catholic pioneers, they named the mountain "La Canada
de la Visitacion del Diablo," "The Gulch of the Visitation of the
Devil," the same being now the boundary lines of one of the famous
Mexican land grants.

CHAPTER II

WHO FOUND IT

Concho was so impatient to reach the camp and deliver his good news to
his companions that more than once the stranger was obliged to command
him to slacken his pace. "Is it not enough, you infernal Greaser, that
you lame your own mule, but you must try your hand on mine? Or am I to
put Jinny down among the expenses?" he added with a grin and a slight
lifting of his baleful eyelid.

When they had ridden a mile along the ridge, they began to descend again
toward the valley. Vegetation now sparingly bordered the trail, clumps
of chemisal, an occasional manzanita bush, and one or two dwarfed
"buckeyes" rooted their way between the interstices of the black-gray
rock. Now and then, in crossing some dry gully, worn by the overflow of
winter torrents from above, the grayish rock gloom was relieved by dull
red and brown masses of color, and almost every overhanging rock bore
the mark of a miner's pick. Presently, as they rounded the curving flank
of the mountain, from a rocky bench below them, a thin ghost-like
stream of smoke seemed to be steadily drawn by invisible hands into
the invisible ether. "It is t