"All is ready," said Wiles; "you are a witness of my placing the
notifications?"

"I am a witness."

"But of this one?" pointing to Concho. "Shall we leave him here?"

"A drunken imbecile,--why not?"

Wiles turned his left eye on the speaker. They chanced to be standing
nearly in the same attitude they had stood the preceding night. Pedro
uttered a cry and an imprecation, "Carramba! Take your devil's eye from
me! What see you? Eh,--what?"

"Nothing, good Pedro," said Wiles, turning his bland right cheek to
Pedro. The infuriated and half-frightened ex-vaquero returned the long
knife he had half-drawn from its sheath, and growled surlily: "Go on
then! But keep thou on that side, and I will on this." And so, side by
side, listening, watching, distrustful of all things, but mainly of each
other, they stole back and up into those shadows from which they might
like evil spirits have been poetically evoked.

A half hour passed, in which the east brightened, flashed, and again
melted into gold. And then the sun came up haughtily, and a fog that
had stolen across the summit in the night arose and fled up the mountain
side, tearing its white robes in its guilty haste, and leaving them
fluttering from tree and crag and scar. A thousand tiny blades, nestling
in the crevices of rocks, nurtured in storms and rocked by the trade
winds, stretched their wan and feeble arms toward Him; but Concho
the strong, Concho the brave, Concho the light-hearted spake not nor