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 nounced; "I am going away with you and be a man."

Juan agreed that it was the only course open to him to escape punishment, which would be as severe in one case as the other, let Captain del Valle be alive or dead.

"He is dead," Cristóbal declared. "Would I miss a man's heart at fifty yards, Juan?"

Juan knew very well that Cristóbal would not miss a mark so fairly presented. Captain del Valle was dead, and in that fact his own peril in California was doubly magnified. No dispensation from the viceroy could exempt him from the charge of complicity in that deed, although he was innocent in intent. He would not have lifted a hand against a soldier in Padre Ignacio's presence.

The two refugees rested in a wooded canyon where night was already deepening, although the peaks of the blasted hills were grey yet in the failing day. Cristóbal searched until he found some pieces of hard wood, to be used in the primitive method of making fire, which he tied to his saddle with great satisfaction, saying they would have no fear of means to cook their meat now. For him, the necessities and comforts of a journey, let it be never so long, were provided.

Juan was of a different mind. He had no reason, certainly, to hold the soldiers in such fear as Cristóbal, never having felt their oppression and cruelty as the Indians who had suffered under them. Their vigilance, and the valor and shrewd-