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 ing to buy flour. He had rested the night in the Pueblo de Los Angeles, and was making a merry clatter as he came up through the pass with four stout mules to his high-wheeled cart, singing a bit of song now and then, happy that Sebastian Alvitre had quit the road for a safer method of freebooting, leaving honest men to go their way untroubled.

Dominguez was not concerned with the burning mountain, that being a sight common enough in his experience. So long as the fire did not block his road he gave it little thought, but his eyes were like peeled eggs at the sight of the two battered, disfigured men beside the spring.

"What is this, in God's name!" said Dominguez, standing on the footboard of his cart, his long whip looped in his hand.

"There is a gentleman here who has met a sad misfortune," Juan explained. "If you will carry him to San Fernando, you will be rewarded."

"I am on my way to San Fernando," said Dominguez, coming down cautiously out of the cart, as if wary of some trick. "Who is he you want me to take,—God save me! what is the matter with his back?"

"It is I, Geronimo Lozano. You will lose nothing, Dominguez, in this."

Dominguez came nearer, bending over Don Geronimo, still with the quick-set way about him of a creature ready to spring and run away. Weak as Don Geronimo's voice was, Dominguez had heard it perfectly, yet he was not convinced.