there stood out against the steel-blue of the sky a succession of wooded
peaks ever rising higher and higher until culminating in the faraway
white mountains of the south; and below, they looked upon a ravine that
was brownish-green until the rays of the departing orb touched the
leaves with opal tints.

Now the fast-falling sun flung its banner of gorgeous colours across the
western sky. Immediately a wonderful light played upon the fleecy cumuli
gathered in the upper heavens of the east and changed them from pearl to
brilliant scarlet. For a moment, also, the purple hills became wonderful
piles of dull gold and copper; a moment more and the magic hand of the
King of Day was withdrawn.

In front of them now, dark, gloomy and threatening rose Cloudy Mountain,
from which the Mining Camp took its name; and on a plateau near its
base the camp itself could plainly be seen. It consisted of a group
of miners' cabins set among pines, firs and manzaneta bushes with two
larger pine-slab buildings, and scattered around in various places were
shafts, whose crude timber-hoists appeared merely as vague outlines in
the fast-fading light. The distance to the camp from where they stood
was not over three miles as the crow flies, but it appeared much less in
the rarefied atmosphere.

As the two bandits stood on the edge of the precipice looking across and
beyond the intervening gulch or ravine, here and there a light twinkled
out from the cabins and, presently, a much stronger illumination shot
forth from one of the larger and more pretentious buildings. Castro was
quick to call his master's attention to it.

"There--that place with the light is The Palmetto Hotel!" he exclaimed.