They came to Largo Crossing at daybreak.  The trail of the robber’s horse led straight to Cobre, following bypaths through the mountains.  The tracks showed plainly that his coming had been by these same short cuts, saving time while Bat Wiley had followed the tortuous stage road through the hills.  Halfway back a heavy spur lay in the trail; some one recognized it as Stanley Mitchell’s—­a smith-wrought spur, painfully fashioned from a single piece of drill steel.

They came to Cobre before sunup; they found brown Awguan, dejected and sweat-streaked, standing in hip-shot weariness on the hill near his corral.  In the corral Stanley’s saddle lay in the sand, the blankets sweat-soaked.

Unwillingly enough, Holland woke Stan from a smiling sleep to arrest him.  They searched the little room, finding the mate to the spur found on the trail, but nothing else to their purpose.  But at last, bringing Stan’s saddle in before locking the house, Bull Pepper noticed a bumpy appearance in the sheepskin lining, and found, between saddle skirt and saddle tree, the stolen money in full, and even the checks that Zurich had sent.

They haled Stan before the justice, who was also proprietor of the Mountain House.  Waiving examination, Stanley Mitchell was held to meet the action of the Grand Jury; and in default of bond—­his guilt being assured and manifest—­he was committed to Tucson Jail.

The morning stage, something delayed on his account, bore him away under guard, en route, most clearly, for the penitentiary.

CHAPTER VII

Mr. Peter Johnson’s arrival in Morning Gate Pass was coincident with that of a very bright and businesslike sun.  Mr. Johnson had made a night ride from the Gavilan country, where he had spent the better part of a pleasant week, during which he had contrived to commingle a minimum of labor with a joyous maximum of innocent amusement.  The essence of these diversions consisted of attempts—­purposely clumsy—­to elude the vigilance of such conspirator prospectors as yet remained to neighbor him; sudden furtive sallies and excursions, beginning at all unreasonable and unexpected hours, ending always in the nothing they set out for, followed always by the frantic espionage of his mystified and bedeviled guardians—­on whom the need fell that some of them must always watch while their charge reposed from his labors.

Tiring at last of this pastime, observing also that his playfellows grew irritable and desperate, Mr. Johnson had sagely concluded that his entertainment palled.  Caching most of his plunder and making a light pack of the remainder, he departed, yawning, taking trail for Cobre in the late afternoon of the day preceding his advent in Morning Gate.

He perched on the saddle, with a leg curled round the horn; he whistled the vivacious air of Tule, Tule Pan, a gay fanfaronade of roistering notes, the Mexican words for which are, for considerations of high morality, best unsung.