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 the camp," said Concho, gleefully; "I