of flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few other necessary articles.  All these things were “packed” on the back of a led horse—­and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness.  That is impossible.  Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect.  He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, “every which way,” taking a hitch in it every now and then, and occasionally surging back on it till the horse’s sides sunk in and he gasped for breath—­but every time the lashings grew tight in one place they loosened in another.  We never did get the load tight all over, but we got it so that it would do, after a fashion, and then we started, in single file, close order, and without a word.  It was a dark night.  We kept the middle of the road, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows of cabins, and whenever a miner came to his door I trembled for fear the light would shine on us an excite curiosity.  But nothing happened.  We began the long winding ascent of the canyon, toward the “divide,” and presently the cabins began to grow infrequent, and the intervals between them wider and wider, and then I began to breathe tolerably freely and feel less like a thief and a murderer.  I was in the rear, leading the pack horse.  As the ascent grew steeper he grew proportionately less satisfied with his cargo, and began to pull back on his riata occasionally and delay progress.  My comrades were passing out of sight in the gloom.  I was getting anxious.  I coaxed and bullied the pack horse till I presently got him into a trot, and then the tin cups and pans strung about his person frightened him and he ran.  His riata was wound around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by he dragged me from my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on without me.  But I was not alone—­the loosened cargo tumbled overboard from the pack horse and fell close to me.  It was abreast of almost the last cabin.

A miner came out and said: 

“Hello!”

I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so very dark in the shadow of the mountain.  So I lay still.  Another head appeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men walked toward me.  They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said: 

“Sh!  Listen.”

I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping justice with a price on my head.  Then the miners appeared to sit down on a boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure what they did.  One said: 

“I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything.  It seemed to be about there—­”

A stone whizzed by my head.  I flattened myself out in the dust like a postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little he would probably hear another noise.  In my heart, now, I execrated secret expeditions.  I promised myself that this should be my last, though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins.  Then one of the men said: