The Story of a Mine | Page 9

recess, peered behind trees,
penetrated copses of buckeye and manzanita, and listened. There was
no sound but the faint soughing of the wind over the pines below him.
For a while he paced backward and forward with a vague sense of
being a sentinel, but his mercurial nature soon rebelled against this
monotony, and soon the fatigues of the day began to tell upon him.
Recourse to his whisky flask only made him the drowsier, until at last
he was fain to lie down and roll himself up tightly in his blanket. The
next moment he was sound asleep.
His horse neighed twice from the summit, but Concho heard him not.
Then the brush crackled on the ledge above him, a small fragment of
rock rolled near his feet, but he stirred not. And then two black figures
were outlined on the crags beyond.
"St-t-t!" whispered a voice. "There is one lying beside the furnace."
The speech was Spanish, but the voice was Wiles's.
The other figure crept cautiously to the edge of the crag and looked
over. "It is Concho, the imbecile," said Pedro, contemptuously.

"But if he should not be alone, or if he should waken?"
"I will watch and wait. Go you and affix the notification."
Wiles disappeared. Pedro began to creep down the face of the rocky
ledge, supporting himself by chemisal and brush-wood.
The next moment Pedro stood beside the unconscious man. Then he
looked cautiously around. The figure of his companion was lost in the
shadow of the rocks above; only a slight crackle of brush betrayed his
whereabouts. Suddenly Pedro flung his serape over the sleeper's head,
and then threw his powerful frame and tremendous weight full upon
Concho's upturned face, while his strong arms clasped the
blanket-pinioned limbs of his victim. There was a momentary upheaval,
a spasm, and a struggle; but the tightly-rolled blanket clung to the
unfortunate man like cerements.
There was no noise, no outcry, no sound of struggle. There was nothing
to be seen but the peaceful, prostrate figures of the two men darkly
outlined on the ledge. They might have been sleeping in each other's
arms. In the black silence the stealthy tread of Wiles in the brush above
was distinctly audible.
Gradually the struggles grew fainter. Then a whisper from the crags:
"I can't see you. What are you doing?"
"Watching!"
"Sleeps he?"
"He sleeps!"
"Soundly?"
"Soundly."
"After the manner of the dead?"

"After the fashion of the dead!"
The last tremor had ceased. Pedro rose as Wiles descended.
"All is ready," said Wiles; "you are a witness of my placing the
notifications?"
"I am a witness."
"But of this one?" pointing to Concho. "Shall we leave him here?"
"A drunken imbecile,--why not?"
Wiles turned his left eye on the speaker. They chanced to be standing
nearly in the same attitude they had stood the preceding night. Pedro
uttered a cry and an imprecation, "Carramba! Take your devil's eye
from me! What see you? Eh,--what?"
"Nothing, good Pedro," said Wiles, turning his bland right cheek to
Pedro. The infuriated and half-frightened ex-vaquero returned the long
knife he had half-drawn from its sheath, and growled surlily: "Go on
then! But keep thou on that side, and I will on this." And so, side by
side, listening, watching, distrustful of all things, but mainly of each
other, they stole back and up into those shadows from which they
might like evil spirits have been poetically evoked.
A half hour passed, in which the east brightened, flashed, and again
melted into gold. And then the sun came up haughtily, and a fog that
had stolen across the summit in the night arose and fled up the
mountain side, tearing its white robes in its guilty haste, and leaving
them fluttering from tree and crag and scar. A thousand tiny blades,
nestling in the crevices of rocks, nurtured in storms and rocked by the
trade winds, stretched their wan and feeble arms toward Him; but
Concho the strong, Concho the brave, Concho the light-hearted spake
not nor stirred.
CHAPTER IV

WHO TOOK IT
There was persistent neighing on the summit. Concho's horse wanted
his breakfast.
This protestation reached the ears of a party ascending the mountain
from its western face. To one of the party it was familiar.
"Why, blank it all, that's Chiquita. That d----d Mexican's lying drunk
somewhere," said the President of the B. M. Co.
"I don't like the look of this at all," said Dr. Guild, as they rode up
beside the indignant animal. "If it had been an American, it might have
been carelessness, but no Mexican ever forgets his beast. Drive ahead,
boys; we may be too late."
In half an hour they came in sight of the ledge below, the crumbled
furnace, and the motionless figure