r so near the
descending hill trail that a stout club might have been substituted for
the pistol. The weather promise was for a starless night, but the
electric arc-lights were already scintillating at their mastheads in
the headquarters railroad yard across the Pannikin. Later, when the
daylight was quite gone and the electrics were hollowing out a bowl of
stark whiteness in the night, Ruiz Gregorio wished he had chosen
otherwise. The camp lights shone full upon him and on the mustang
standing with drooped head at his elbow, and the trail on the other side
of the boulder was in shadow.

He was about to take the risk of moving farther up the hill-path to a
less exposed lurking place, was hesitating only because his indolent
soul rebelled at the thought of having to drag Ford's body so many added
steps to its burial in the river, when the clink of shod hoofs upon
stone warned him that the time for scene-shifting had passed. Pushing
the mustang out of the line of sight from the trail, he flattened
himself against the great rock and waited.

Ford rode down the last declivity cautiously, for his horse's sake. The
trail came out of the hills abruptly, dropping into the rock-strewn
river valley within hailing distance of the camp. Well within the sweep
of the masthead lights across the stream, the boulder-strewn flat was as
light as day, save where the sentinel rocks flung their shadows; and
promptly at the first facing of the bright electrics, Ford's horse
stumbled aside from the path and began to take short cuts between the
thick-standing boulders for the river. This was how the Mexican,
instead of having his victim at a complete disadvantage, found himself
suddenly uncovered by the flank, exposed, recognized, and hailed in no
uncertain tones.

"Hello, Mattacheco! what are you doing here?" Ford had a flash-light
picture of the horse standing with his muzzle to the ground; of the man
flattened against the rock. Then he saw the dull gleam of the lights
upon blued metal. "You devil!" he shouted; and unarmed as he was,
spurred his tired beast at the assassin.

Here, then, was the weak link in Ruiz Gregorio's chain twisted to the
breaking point at the very outset. Instead of taking a deliberate
pot-shot at an unsuspecting victim, he was obliged to face about, to
fire hastily at a charging enemy, and to spring nimbly aside to save
himself from being ridden down. The saving jump was an awkward one: it
brought him into breath-