The morning following Easter opened bright and clear, while on every hand were the signs of spring.  A vaquero was dispatched to the Mission to summon the padre, carrying both a letter and the compliments of the ranch.  Among the jobs outlined for the week was the repairing of a well, the walls of which had caved in, choking a valuable water supply with debris.  This morning Deweese took a few men and went to the well, to raise the piping and make the necessary repairs, curbing being the most important.  But while the foreman and Santiago Ortez were standing on a temporary platform some thirty feet down, a sudden and unexpected cave-in occurred above them.  Deweese saw the danger, called to his companion, and, in a flash laid hold of a rope with which materials were being lowered.  The foreman’s warning to his companion reached the helpers above, and Deweese was hastily windlassed to the surface, but the unfortunate vaquero was caught by the falling debris, he and the platform being carried down into the water beneath.  The body of Ortez was recovered late that evening, a coffin was made during the night, and the next morning the unfortunate man was laid in his narrow home.

The accident threw a gloom over the ranch.  Yet no one dreamt that a second disaster was at hand.  But the middle of the week passed without the return of either of the absent boys.  Foul play began to be suspected, and meanwhile Father Norquin arrived, fully expecting to solemnize within a few days the marriage of one of the missing men.  Aaron Scales was dispatched to the Vaux ranch, and returned the next morning by daybreak with the information that neither Quayle nor Cotton had been seen on the Frio recently.  A vaquero was sent to the Booth ranch, who brought back the intelligence that neither of the missing boys had been seen since they passed northward some two weeks before.  Father Norquin, as deeply affected as any one, returned to the Mission, unable to offer a word of consolation.  Several days passed without tidings.  As the days lengthened into a week, the master, as deeply mortified over the incident as if the two had been his own sons, let his suspicion fall on Quayle.  And at last when light was thrown on the mystery, the old ranchero’s intuition proved correct.

My injured foot improved slowly, and before I was able to resume my duties on the ranch, I rode over one day to the San Miguel for a short visit.  Tony Hunter had been down to Oakville a few days before my arrival, and while there had met Clint Dansdale, who was well acquainted with Quayle and Cotton.  Clint, it appeared, had been in San Antonio and met our missing men, and the three had spent a week in the city chumming together.  As Dansdale was also on horseback, the trio agreed to start home the same time, traveling in company until their ways separated.  Cotton had told Dansdale what business had brought him to the city, and received the latter’s congratulations.  The boys had decided to leave for home on the ninth,