l tangles of wild grapevines, or such smaller
growths as clung close to the water among the larger, ragged
cottonwoods that dotted the floor of the valley. The Mexican plunged
ahead as confidently as before, and in this tangled going his speed was
greater than that of the horses. "_Cuidado_!" (careful) "Juan," cried
Curly warningly, and the latter turned back a face inscrutable as ever.

The party moved up the valley a mile above the old buffalo ford, and
now at last there appeared a change in the deportment of the guide.
His step quickened. He prattled vaguely to himself. It seemed that
something was near. There was a solemnity in the air. Overhead an
excited crow crossed and recrossed the thin strip of high blue sky.
Above the crow a buzzard swung in slow, repeated circles, though not
joined by any of its sombre brotherhood. Mystery, expectation, dread,
sat upon this scene. The two men rode with hands upon their pistols
and leaning forward to see that which they felt must now be near.

They turned an angle of the valley, and came out upon a little flat
among the trees. Toward this open space the Mexican sprang with
hoarse, excited cries. The horses plunged back, snorting. Yet in the
little glade all Was silence, solitude. Swiftly Franklin and Curly
dismounted and made fast their horses, and then followed up the
Mexican, their weapons now both drawn.

This glade, now empty, had once held a man, or men. Here was a trodden
place where a horse had been tied to a tree. Here was the broken end
of a lariat. Here had been a little bivouac, a bed scraped up of the
scanty fallen leaves and bunches of taller grass. Here were broken
bushes--broken, how? There was the fire, now sunken into a heap of
ashes, a long, large, white heap, very large for a cowman's camp fire.
And there--

And there was it! There was some Thing. There was the reason of this
unspoken warning in the air. There lay the object of their search. In
a flash the revolvers covered the cowering figure of the giant, who,
prone upon his knees, was now raving, gibbering, praying, calling upon
long-forgotten saints to save him from this sight, "_O Santa Maria! O
Purissima! O Madre de Dios!_" he moaned, wringing his hands and
shivering as though stricken with an ague. He writhed among the
leaves, his eyes fixed only upon that ghastly shape which lay before
him.

There, in the ashes of the dead fire, as though embalmed, as though
alive, as t