_Buenas Dias, amigo_," he saluted.

The man looked up with eyes full of patient suffering, like the eyes of a
hurt animal. He did not seem either surprised or frightened. He nodded and
went on binding up his leg.

Ramon watched him a minute. He saw that the man was weak from loss of
blood. There was a great patch of dried blood on the ground beside him,
now beginning to flake and curl in the sun.

"I will come back in a minute, friend," he said.

He went back to his camp, saddled his horses, putting some food in the
saddle pockets. When he returned, the Mexican sat in exactly the same
place with his back against a rock and his legs and arms inert. Ramon
fried bacon and made coffee for him. He had to help the man put the food
in his mouth and hold a cup for him to drink. Afterward, with great
difficulty, he loaded the man on his saddle horse, where he sat heavily,
clutching the pommel with both hands. Ramon mounted the pack horse
bareback.

"Where do you live, friend?" Ramon asked.

"Tusas," the Mexican replied, naming a little village ten miles down the
canyon.

They exchanged no other words until they came within sight of the group of
_adobe_ houses. Then Ramon stopped his horse and turned to the man.

"You were hunting," he told him slowly and impressively, "and you dropped
your gun and shot yourself. _Sabes?_"

The man nodded.

"How much were you paid to kill me, friend?" Ramon then asked.

The man looked at the pommel of the saddle, and his swarthy face darkened
with a heavy flush.

"One hundred dollars," he admitted. "I needed the money to christen a
child. Could I let my child go to hell? But I did not mean to kill you.
Only to beat you, so you would go away. Do not ask who sent me, for the
love of God.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

"I ask nothing more, friend," Ramon assured him. "And since you were to
have a hundred dollars for making me leave the country, here is a hundred
dollars for not succeeding."

Both of them laughed. Ramon then rode on and delivered the man to his
excited and grateful wife. He went back to his camp very weary and sore,
but feeling that he had done an excellent stroke of work for his purpose.

CHAPTER XXVI

After this occurrence his success among the humbler Mexicans was more
marked than ever, but some of the men of property who had been subsidized
by MacDougall were not so easily won over. Such a case was that of old
Pedro Alcatraz