tain: whoever it
was the mountains were loved for themselves, for no mere digger of gold
would think of erecting a habitation in view of those strange, vast, and
silent heights!

And as he meditated thus, he perceived that the far off Sierras were
forming a background for a sinuous coil of smoke from the cabin. For
some time he watched it curling up into the great arch of sky. It was as
if he were hypnotised by it and, in a vague, shadowy way, he had a sense
of being connected, somehow, with the little cabin and its recluse. Was
this feeling that he had a premonition of danger? Was this a moment of
foreboding and distrust of the situation yet to be revealed? For like
most venturesome men he always had a moment before every one of his
undertakings in which his instinct either urged him forward or held him
back.

Suddenly he became conscious that his eyes no longer saw the smoke. He
stared hard to glimpse it, but it was gone. And with a supreme effort he
wrenched himself free from a sort of paralysis which was stealing away
his senses.

Now the light in the cabin disappeared, and since the shades of night,
for which he had been waiting, had fallen, he called to the impatient
and wondering Castro, and together they went back to the trail.

But even as they crossed the gulch and reached the outskirts of the camp
a great white moon rose from behind the Sierras. To Castro, hidden now
in the pines, it meant nothing so long as it did not interfere with his
purpose. As a matter of fact he was already listening intently to the
bursts of song and shouts of revelry that came every now and then from
the nearby saloon. But his master, unaccountably under the spell of the
moon's mystery and romance, watched it until it shed its silvery and
magic light upon the lone cabin on the top of Cloudy Mountain, which
Fate had chosen for the decisive scene of his dramatic life.

V.

Inside The Polka, not a bit more, and not a bit less sardonic--it was
this imperturbability which made him so resistless to most people--than
he was prior to the banishment of The Sidney Duck, the Sheriff of
Manzaneta County waited patiently until the returning puppets of his
will had had time to compose themselves. It took them merely the
briefest of periods, but it served to increase visibly the long ash at
the end of Rance's cigar. At length he shot a hawk-like glance at Sonora
and proposed a little game of poker.

"This time, gentlemen--" he said