The tempest passed in a moment; it was not Concho’s nature to suffer long nor brood over an injury.  As he raised his head again his eye caught the shimmer of the quicksilver,—­that pool of merry antic metal that had so delighted him an hour before.  In a few moments Concho was again disporting with it; chasing it here and there, rolling it in his palms and laughing with boy-like glee at its elusive freaks and fancies.  “Ah, sprightly one,—­skipjack,—­there thou goest,—­come here.  This way,—­now I have thee, little one,—­come, muchacha,—­come and kiss me,” until he had quite forgotten the defection of his companions.  And even when he shouldered his sorry pack, he was fain to carry his playmate away with him in his empty leathern flask.

And yet I fancy the sun looked kindly on him as he strode cheerily down the black mountain side, and his step was none the less free nor light that he carried with him neither the brilliant prospects nor the crime of his late comrades.

CHAPTER III

WHO CLAIMED IT

The fog had already closed in on Monterey, and was now rolling, a white, billowy sea above, that soon shut out the blue breakers below.  Once or twice in descending the mountain Concho had overhung the cliff and looked down upon the curving horse-shoe of a bay below him,—­distant yet many miles.  Earlier in the afternoon he had seen the gilt cross on the white-faced Mission flare in the sunlight, but now all was gone.  By the time he reached the highway of the town it was quite dark, and he plunged into the first fonda at the wayside, and endeavored to forget his woes and his weariness in aguardiente.  But Concho’s head ached, and his back ached, and he was so generally distressed that he bethought him of a medico,—­an American doctor,—­lately come into the town, who had once treated Concho and his mule with apparently the same medicine, and after the same heroic fashion.  Concho reasoned, not illogically, that if he were to be physicked at all he ought to get the worth of his money.  The grotesque extravagance of life, of fruit and vegetables, in California was inconsistent with infinitesimal doses.  In Concho’s previous illness the doctor had given him a dozen 4 grain quinine powders.

The following day the grateful Mexican walked into the Doctor’s office—­cured.  The Doctor was gratified until, on examination, it appeared that to save trouble, and because his memory was poor, Concho had taken all the powders in one dose.  The Doctor shrugged his shoulders and—­altered his practice.

“Well,” said Dr. Guild, as Concho sank down exhaustedly in one of the Doctor’s two chairs, “what now?  Have you been sleeping again in the tule marshes, or are you upset with commissary whisky?  Come, have it out.”

But Concho declared that the devil was in his stomach, that Judas Iscariot had possessed himself of his spine, that imps were in his forehead, and that his feet had been scourged by Pontius Pilate.