On the threshold of his enterprise, after he had taken its first hazardous
step with safety and success, Coronado found himself at the point of
death.




CHAPTER V.


When Coronado regained a portion of the senses which had been throttled
out of him, he discovered Texas Smith standing by his side, and two dead
men lying near, all rather vaguely seen at first through his dizziness and
the moonlight.

"What does this mean?" he gasped, getting on his hands and knees, and then
on his feet. "Who has been assassinating?"

The borderer, who, instead of helping his employer to rise, was coolly
reloading his rifle, did not immediately reply. As the shaken and somewhat
unmanned Coronado looked at him, he was afraid of him. The moonlight made
Smith's sallow, disfigured face so much more ghastly than usual, that he
had the air of a ghoul or vampyre. And when, after carefully capping his
piece, he drawled forth the word "Patchies," his harsh, croaking voice had
an unwholesome, unhuman sound, as if it were indeed the utterance of a
feeder upon corpses.

"Apaches!" said Coronado. "What! after I had made a treaty with them?"

"This un is a 'Patchie," remarked Texas, giving the nearest body a shove