his at a gulp. The boys sipped a few drops, winking rapidly. Then
Roldan thought it time to speak: his chief was visibly thawed.

"What are you keeping us for?" he asked.

"Ransom." Anastacio lit a cigarrito--one of the padre's--and lay back
on a bearskin.

"Do you know why we ran away? To escape the conscription. If you give
us up, all our adventures, our dangers, our escapes, will be as
nothing, and we shall be punished besides."

Anastacio moved his eyes to Roldan's with a flash of interest.

"Good! I hate the government. You shall stay here until the time of
conscription is over. Then I will get a big sack of Mexican dollars, a
herd of cattle, a caponara of horses, and much tobacco and whiskey. Who
are your fathers?"

Roldan explained.

Anastacio flushed under his thick skin. "Good. I will double the
ransom--and the guard."

"The conscription will be over in a few weeks--"

"You could not go before. We too must hide. Of course the soldiers are
behind. I have many scouts watching. Now go to sleep."

The following week was clear and bright, but very cold. The boys, bred
in the warm basin of California, must have suffered had not Anastacio
ordered one of his minions to make them coat and boots from the skin of
the coyote. Every morning the chief drilled his men with the tactics of
a born commander who had let no opportunity for observation escape him.
The military discipline of the pueblo was only relaxed for three hours
in the afternoon, during which time the Indians were given full taste
of the freedom they coveted that they might battle for it the more
passionately when the time came. They gambled, slept, shot game in the
forest, exercised the horses, which were in corral about a mile from
the camp. The boys shot deer with Anastacio, and wrestled in the plaza.
Occasionally the taciturn Indian unbent when sitting by the great
bonfire in the open at night, and told wild tales of savage life before
the padres came. Roldan admired his splendid supple body and fearless
manhood, but the Indian was too sinister to inspire affection. Adan was
loudly bored. Roldan's ardent imagination sustained him.

At the end of the week the scouts having failed to discover any sign of
the enemy, Anastacio determined to go down to the river in the valley
for a fortnight's salmon fishing. He, too, was bored. The fangs of
civilisation are long and tenacious.

It was on a brilliant winter's morning that Anastacio, his captives,