“Nonsense,” said the editor impulsively; “she will forgive you!  You didn’t know your assailant was a horse when you fired. Look at the attack on you in the road!”

Richards shook his head with dogged hopelessness.  “It’s no use, Mr. Grey.  I oughter guessed it was a hoss then—­thar was nothin’ else in that corral.  No!  Cota’s already gone away back to San Jose, and I reckon the Ramierez has got scared of her and packed her off.  So, on account of its bein’ her hoss, and what happened betwixt me and her, you see my mouth is shut.”

“And the columns of the ‘Clarion’ too,” said the editor, with a sigh.

“I know it’s hard, sir, but it’s better so.  I’ve reckoned mebbe she was a little crazy, and since you’ve told me that Spanish yarn, it mout be that she was sort o’ playin’ she was that priest, and trained that mustang ez she did.”

After a pause, something of his old self came back into his blue eyes as he sadly hitched up his braces and passed them over his broad shoulders.  “Yes, sir, I was a fool, for we’ve lost the only bit of real sensation news that ever came in the way of the ‘Clarion.’”

A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS

It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and the hottest hour of the day on that Sierran foothill.  The western sun, streaming down the mile-long slope of close-set pine crests, had been caught on an outlying ledge of glaring white quartz, covered with mining tools and debris, and seemed to have been thrown into an incandescent rage.  The air above it shimmered and became visible.  A white canvas tent on it was an object not to be borne; the steel-tipped picks and shovels, intolerable to touch and eyesight, and a tilted tin prospecting pan, falling over, flashed out as another sun of insufferable effulgence.  At such moments the five members of the “Eureka Mining Company” prudently withdrew to the nearest pine-tree, which cast a shadow so sharply defined on the glistening sand that the impingement of a hand or finger beyond that line cut like a knife.  The men lay, or squatted, in this shadow, feverishly puffing their pipes and waiting for the sun to slip beyond the burning ledge.  Yet so irritating was the dry air, fragrant with the aroma of the heated pines, that occasionally one would start up and walk about until he had brought on that profuse perspiration which gave a momentary relief, and, as he believed, saved him from sunstroke.  Suddenly a voice exclaimed querulously:—­

“Derned if the blasted bucket ain’t empty ag’in!  Not a drop left, by Jimminy!”

A stare of helpless disgust was exchanged by the momentarily uplifted heads; then every man lay down again, as if trying to erase himself.

“Who brought the last?” demanded the foreman.

“I did,” said a reflective voice coming from a partner lying comfortably on his back, “and if anybody reckons I’m going to face Tophet ag’in down that slope, he’s mistaken!” The speaker was thirsty—­but he had principles.