eros who
patronised him; he would teach them the folly of their useless lives.

"Look," said Anastacio, abruptly. "We are here. It is a pueblo of my
fathers, and will serve us now."

He pointed with his riding switch through the trees to a vague
whiteness, and in a moment they emerged into another open. It was a
clearing some three hundred feet square, crowded with dilapidated
hovels, white under a light fall of snow. It was in the heart of the
Sierras, on the flat of a peak; and high on every side reared other
peaks, glittering with snow, black with redwoods. The snow clouds had
passed. The moon rode in a dark blue sky set thick with stars. The
silence, the repose, were appalling.

Roldan jumped to the ground, and accompanied by Anastacio, ran up and
down to get the cold and fatigue of night travel out of his body. In a
few moments they were joined by Adan, who came waddling up, his broad
face knit with perplexity and delight.

"I leave you now," said Anastacio, "but remember--if you attempt to
escape you carry poisoned arrows in your backs."

"Ay, Roldan!" exclaimed Adan, when their formidable host was out of
hearing. "But this was more than we bargained for. I don't know whether
I like it or not."

"I must say I don't like the idea of being in the power of
savages--Indians," said Roldan, contemptuously. "But as we started out
for adventure we must take black bread with white. I think I do rather
like this, but I shall not if we have to stay here too long and nothing
happens."

"Isn't anything likely to happen?" asked Adan, anxiously.

"How can one tell? And who could find this place? But if worst comes to
worst we'll run away--and not with poisoned arrows in our backs,
either."

"That we will," said Adan, emphatically. "We've done that before."

The boys were given a good supper of meat roasted over coals, and a
slice of Mission cake, then were escorted by Anastacio to the largest
of the huts.

"Enter and sleep," he said. "It is my hut. I shall sleep beside you."

VIII

The boys slept soundly between two excellent Mission blankets in a
corner of the hut, whose walls and floors had been well swept with
Mission brooms. Anastacio, despite his contempt for the trammels of
civilisation, had developed an aristocratic taste or two. He slept by
the door, but when the boys awoke he was not there. The pueblo, but for
two sentinels standing before the door, was apparently deserted. The
sun was looking over