ether MacDougall would have countenanced such tactics, but it
might well have been an agent of MacDougall acting on his own
responsibility. Or it might have been some one sent by old Archulera.
Then, too, there were many poor connections of the Delcasar family who
would profit by his death.

As he stood there in the dark, shivering and miserable, the idea of death
was not hard for him to conceive. He realized that but for the snort of
the saddle horse he would now be lying under the tree with the top of his
head crushed in. The man would probably have dragged his body into the
thick timber and left it. There he would have lain and rotted. Or perhaps
the coyotes would have eaten him and the buzzards afterward picked his
bones. He shuddered. Despite his acute misery, life had never seemed more
desirable. He thought of sunlight and warmth, of good food and of the love
of women, and these things seemed more sweet than ever before. He
realized, for the first time, too, that he faced many dangers and that the
chance of death walked with him all the time. He resolved fiercely that he
would beat all his enemies, that he would live and have his desires which
were so sweet to him.

Daylight came at last, showing him first the rim of the mountain serrated
with spruce tops, and then lighting the canyon, revealing his disordered
camp and his horses grazing quietly in the open. He went immediately and
examined the ground where the struggle had taken place. A plain trail of
blood lead away from the place, as he had expected. He formed a plan of
action immediately.

First he made a great fire, dried and warmed himself, cooked and ate his
breakfast, drinking a full pint of hot coffee. Then he rolled up all his
belongings, hid them in the bushes, and picketed his horses in a side
canyon where the grass was good. When these preparations were complete, he
took the trail of blood and followed it with the utmost care. He carried
his weapon cocked in his hand, and always before he went around a bend in
the canyon, or passed through a clump of trees, he paused and looked long
and carefully, like an animal stalking dangerous prey.

At last, from the cover of some willows, he saw a man sitting beside the
creek. The man was half-naked, and was binding up his leg with some strips
torn from his dirty shirt. He was a Mexican of the lowest and most brutal
type, with a swarthy skin, black hair and a bullet-shaped head. Ramon
walked toward him.

"