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 shower. The summit of the mountain was sharp against the clear sky, stalks of yucca, from which the bloom had long since withered, standing like spears out of the barrens and ledges from which they grew. On the summit of the eastern peak a horse was standing; Juan could see its head lifted above the shrubs which hemmed the little rocky islet of the top. It was unmistakably plain, although it must have been more than a mile away, in a straight line.

Juan could not see anything of the animal but the head and neck, lifted in the posture of sharp attention, as if the creature had caught an alarm, or stood watching the movement of something on the opposite slope. As the trail of those whom he sought led on into a canyon that promised to offer a way to the summit, Juan had no doubt that this horse was from San Fernando, and that the others, and their riders, with the unhappy Don Geronimo, were close by.

There was no road, no trace or mark of any way frequented by man, in the canyon through which Juan followed the track of those who bore Don Geronimo to the reckoning of his cruel years. Here the riders had been forced to scatter, each finding a way for himself through the close-grown thickets of chaparral. It was slow going; more than an hour of winding and forging through the rough tangle, where harsh branch and bramble laid hold of every fold and wrinkle in a man's garment and sought to hold him back, brought Juan only fairly