he knew must be the assembled and startled rancher'a.

Our friend was a philosophical fellow, as we have seen, and as the
natural thing to do was to gather up the little piles of meal, tie them
up in the extra shirt, and make off with them, he did it. There was no
need now for him to trouble the village, so he quietly withdrew by the
way he had come, and, guided by the excited sounds that still reached
his ears, made a roundabout way back to the trail, striking it beyond
the village. At the next water, he mixed some of the meal into a gruel
and ate it. It was not very palatable, and again he thought of the good
food at the Mission, from which he was now forever debarred. But a look
at Big Flower, gleaming like a great golden mushroom in the sun,
consoled him, as he thought of the wealth and power he would enjoy among
his tribe by means of this unparalleled marvel.

Night found him halfway between the Santa Mar'a Valley and the next
higher one, to which the Spaniards who had first seen it had given the
name of Ballena, from the long mountain, like a whale in outline, that
shuts it in on the northwest. He found water, made a fire in the
time-honored Indian way by rubbing two dry sticks together, and cooked
the remaining meal. There was enough for a good supper, and some over,
which he made into little cakes, drying them hard on the hot stones. He
put on all the clothes again to sleep in, and made a wind-break as
before with the umbrella. It was really more comfortable than the hard
bed in his hut at the Mission, and he felt more than contented, even
jubilant, over the change in his fortunes.

In the morning he said his prayers again before Big Flower, and started
on his way early. He had pulled on the extra clothing at night over what
he was then wearing, and as the morning was cold, and the trail good, so