"It was almost midnight when we reached the ranchito where the girl
lived. We asked him if he had any friends at this ranch whom he wished
to see. This he denied. When we informed him that by special request
a lady wished to bid him farewell, he lost some of his bluster and
bravado. We all dismounted, leaving one man outside with the other
two prisoners, and entered a small yard where the girl lived. Our
half-blood aroused her and called her out to meet her friend, El Lobo.
The girl delayed us some minutes, and we apologized to him for the
necessity of irons and our presence in meeting his Dulce Corazon. When
the girl came out we were some distance from the jacal. There was just
moonlight enough to make her look beautiful.

"As she advanced, she called him by some pet name in their language,
when he answered her gruffly, accusing her of treachery, and turned
his back upon her. She approached within a few feet, when it was
noticeable that she was racked with emotion, and asked him if he had
no kind word for her. Turning on her, he repeated the accusation of
treachery, and applied a vile expression to her. That moment the
girl flashed into a fiend, and throwing a shawl from her shoulders,
revealed a pistol, firing it twice before a man could stop her. El
Lobo sank in his tracks, and she begged us to let her trample his
lifeless body. Later, when composed, she told us that we had not used
her any more than she had used us, in bringing him helpless to her. As
things turned out it looked that way.

"We lashed the dead thief on his horse and rode until daybreak, when
we buried him. We could have gotten a big reward for him dead or
alive, and we had the evidence of his death, but the manner in which
we got it made it undesirable. El Lobo was missed, but the manner of
his going was a secret of four men and a Mexican girl. The other two
prisoners went over the road, and we even reported to them that he had
attempted to strangle her, and we shot him to save her. Something had
to be said."

The smoking and yarning had ended. Darkness had settled over the camp
but a short while, when every one was sound asleep. It must have
been near midnight when a number of us were aroused by the same
disturbance. The boys sat bolt upright and listened eagerly. We were
used to being awakened by shots, and the cause of our sudden awakening
was believed to be the same,--a shot. While the exchange of opinion
was going the round, all anxiety on t