t their homes, but others would be with the sheep
herds, scattered here and there in the high country. He faced long days of
mountain wandering, and for all that he longed to be done with his task,
this part of it was sweet to him.

CHAPTER XXV

These were days of power and success, days of a glamour that lingered long
in his mind. Beyond a doubt he was destroying MacDougall's plan and
realizing his own. Sometimes he met a surly Mexican who would not listen
to him, but nearly always he won the man over in the end. He was amazed at
his own resourcefulness and eloquence. It seemed as though some inhibition
in him had been broken down, some magical elixir poured into his
imagination. He found that he could literally take a sheep camp by storm,
entering into the life of the men, telling them stories, singing them
songs, passing out presents of tobacco and whisky, often delivering a
wildly applauded harangue on the necessity for all Mexicans to act
together against the gringos, who would otherwise soon own the country.
Never once did he think of the incongruity of thus fanning the flames of
race hatred for the love of a girl with grey eyes and yellow hair.

He did not always reach a house or a sheep camp at night. Many a time he
camped alone, catching trout for his supper from a mountain stream, and
going to sleep to the lonely music of running water in a wilderness. At
such times many a man would have lost faith in himself, would have feared
his crimes and lost his hopes. But to Ramon this loneliness was an old
friend. Like all who have lived much out-of-doors he was at heart a
pantheist, and felt more at peace and unity with wild nature than ever he
had with men.

But there was one such night when he felt troubled. As he rode up the
Tusas Canyon at twilight, a sense of insecurity came over him, amounting
almost to fear. He had had a somewhat similar feeling once when a panther
had trailed him on a winter night. Now, as then, he had no idea what it
was that menaced him; he was simply warned by that sixth sense which
belongs to all wild things, and to men in whom there remains something of
the feral. His horses shared his unrest. When he picketed them, just
before dark, they fed uneasily, stopping now and then to stand like
statues with lifted heads, testing the wind with their nostrils, moving
their ears to catch some sound beyond human perception.

When he had eaten his supper a