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 white as a trickle of flour over the thirsty land, Juan found the mule's tracks. Padre Ignacio had ridden in haste; it was written there in the dust. Straight on to the north he had gone, unseeing in his fixed belief that those whom he sought continued on before him.

With this discovery, Juan dismounted. He hastily took his sack of provisions from the cantle of his saddle, wrapped his long grey cloak around it and placed it in the branches of a sturdy live-oak tree that stood beside the road. He debated with himself briefly on the question of his firearms, deciding that they must be left behind. Padre Ignacio had missed the object of his quest; he would ride far into the mountains before discovering his mistake. Juan had no doubt of his own duty in this situation; Don Geronimo's hat, dropped unseen by his captors, or carelessly passed as it flew off in his headlong ride, had appealed with tragic eloquence. Yet Don Geronimo's enemies were Juan's friends; he could not pursue them armed.

Two hours before dawn the morning fog blew in from the sea, muffling the moon like a lady's face behind her mantilla, dimming at first, speedily obscuring altogether, the light that had been Juan's guidance in following the vaqueros' trail. He groped along in the grey mistiness, leading his horse, bending low, sometimes feeling the ground for the tracks, only to lose the trail in a cluttered confusion ef hoofprints where a herd of cattle had drifted across it. He waited there, impatient of the delay,