“Yes,” said Mississip; “an’ one of them fellers that started ahead hez found it fust, fur here’s a man’s track a-goin’ up.”

Rapidly the excited miners followed the tracks through the snow, and found them gradually leading to the regular trail across the mountain, which trail few men ventured upon at that season.  Suddenly the men in advance stopped.

“Here ’tis, I reckon!” cried Mississip, springing across a small cleft in the rocks, and running toward a dark object lying on the sheltered side of a small cliff.  “Good God!” he continued, as he stooped down; “it’s Codago!  An’ he’s froze stiff.”

“Serve him right, cuss him,” growled Lynn Taps.  “I almost wish he had a soul, so he could catch it good an’ hot, now he’s gone!”

“He’s got his pack with him,” shouted Mississip, “and a huggin’ it ez tight ez ef he could take it to—­to wherever he’s gone to.”.

“No man with a soul could hev ben cool enough to pack up his traps after seein’ that poor woman’s face,” argued Lynn Taps.

Mississip tore off a piece of his trowsers, struck fire with flint and steel, poured on whisky, and blew it into a flame.

Rapidly the miners straggled up the trail, and halted opposite Mississip.

“Well, I’ll be durned!” shouted the latter; “he ain’t got no shirt on, an’ there’s an ugly cut in his arm.  It beats anything I ever seed!”

One by one the miners leaped the cleft, and crowded about Mississip and stared.

It was certainly Codago, and there was certainly his pack, made up in his poncho, in the usual Greaser manner, and held tightly in his arms.

But while they stared, there was a sudden movement of the pack itself.

Lynn Taps gave a mighty tug at it, extricated it from the dead man’s grasp, and rapidly undid it.

Suddenly, by the glare of a fresh light, the boys saw the face of a rather dirty, large-eyed, brown-skinned Mexican baby; and the baby, probably by way of recognition, raised high a voice such as the boys never heard before on that side of the Rocky Mountains.

“Here’s what that cut in his arm means,” shouted a miner who had struck a light on the trail; “there’s a finger-mark, done in blood on the snow, by the side of the trail, an’ a-pintin’ right to that ledge; an’ here’s his shirt a-flappin’ on a stick stuck in a snow-bank lookin’ t’ward camp.”

“There ain’t no doubt ’bout what the woman said to him, or what made him yell an’ git, boys,” said Chagres Charley, solemnly, as he took a blanket from his shoulders and spread it on the ground.

Mississip took off his hat, and lifting the poor Mexican from the snow, laid him in the blanket.  Lynn Taps hid the baby, rewrapped, under his own blanket, and hurried down the mountain, while four men picked up Codago and followed.

Lynn Taps scratched on the rawhide door; the doctor opened it.

Lynn Tapps unrolled the bundle, and its occupant again raised its voice.