III


In the brush and foliage of the sierra, Demetrio Macias
and his threescore men slept until the halloo of the horn,
blown by Pancracio from the crest of a peak, awakened
them.

"Time, boys! Look around and see what's what!"
Anastasio Montanez said, examining his rifle springs.
Yet he was previous; an hour or more elapsed with no
sound or stir save the song of the locust in the brush or
the frog stirring in his mudhole. At last, when the ulti-
mate faint rays of the moon were spent in the rosy dim-
ness of the dawn, the silhouette of a soldier loomed at the
end of the trail. As they strained their eyes, they could
distinguish others behind him, ten, twenty, a hundred.
. . . Then, suddenly, darkness swallowed them up. Only
when the sun rose, Demetrio's band realized that the
canyon was alive with men, midgets seated on miniature
horses.

"Look at 'em, will you?" said Pancracio. "Pretty, ain't
they? Come on, boys, let's go and roll marbles with 'em."

Now the moving dwarf figures were lost in the dense
chaparral, now they reappeared, stark and black against