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sunny, with a bow window shaded by inner shutters, was opened and renovated once a year, its furniture systematically disarranged and rearranged with mathematical precision, and then the room was religiously closed, excepting upon state occasions, until house-cleaning time the next year.

It always gave one an uncomfortable sensation of fear, as though the furniture were about to jump upon him, to be left alone in this room; for it had the appearance of having stood still in one cramped position for so very long, that tables and chairs and mantel ornaments must do something very desperate before long, if only to relieve the monotony. And then those little brown window blinds—just the same ones and the same number always open, and the same number and the same ones always closed. Irresistibly, as one sat uncomfortably upon a corner of a crouching chair, one fell to wondering what would be the effect if one of the other shutters could be opened, or if it would not be a relief to so change the mathematical squares of light and shade upon the ingrain carpet, as to produce a different geometric effect, or whether any of the other shutters were made to open at all, or only for sham. And then, just as you were on the point of solving these problems by the commission of an overt act, some of the household would come into the room.

Jim Newman felt the somewhat incongruous condition of his home-keeping, as men will, but failed to analyze the trouble, and so betook himself more and more to horses, and guns, and dogs, and farming.

sweets of sorrow. Possibly she could not have won him again, had she tried. Even a man and his wife may come to know each other too well.

Billy and name was Charles, but for the twelve years that he had been upon the earth, no living being had called him anything else than "the Gov'nor") drove their cows into the Newman barn-yard that calm June evening, and the Gov'nor went about his milking in the business-like manner of one long accustomed to the task. Billy found more congenial, possibly more profitable, occupation in the alfalfa pasture close by.

"the Gov'nor" (the boy's

It is no small task, milking a dozen cows, and the Gov'nor found the night come down thick upon him and the stars begin to sprinkle the black vault with diamond dust before the task was half completed. But the Gov'nor had no eyes for scenery as yet. He was vastly more intent upon getting his work done and putting all things about the ranch'in shape preparatory to the hunt, which his father and himself were to start upon in the morning. Without so much as a glance at the diamond dust then, or at the low hills darkly keeping watch about the valley, the Gov'nor carried hist pails of milk into the farmhouse kitchen, set the pails upon a table there, and turned to go about the rest of his evening labor.

At another table in the same room, Mrs. Newman was "washin' up" the dishes.

"I wisht you'd strain that there milk Gov'nor" and there was a plaintive drawl in the voice. "'Pears that I haint never agoin' to git my work done."

"I haint got no time to strain yer milk. Them there hosses is ter feed yit." There was no shadow of impertinence in this reply, nor any shade of resentment in the matterof-course manner of its reception by the mother. Impertinence was beneath the Gov'nor. He always treated women-folks with that species of tolerant complaisance which one sometimes sees a mastiff observe to

ward a poodle. In fact, I am not at all certain that the Gov'nor was not rather sorry for his mother, as being a poor sort of ignorant creature, possessing no soul above housework and the parlor.

He went out into the twilight from the kitchen, making his way to the stables, to his favorite occupation of feeding and bedding-down the horses. That task must be done unusually well to-night, for the beasts had a long day of mountain travel before them a long night, rather; for the party were to start in the night. For this, there were various reasons. The close season for deer did not expire until the first day of Julyand this was only the 27th of June. In evading a law, even one so loosely enforced as the game law, one cannot be over-cautious. Again, Ramon Soto, the greatest guide and hunter in all that region, had agreed to take the party to a new hunting ground-a ground. heretofore untried by any white man-and the utmost secrecy as to route taken was an imperative necessity.

The moon was painting a coronal of silver upon the crests of crouching hills about the valley as the Gov'nor betook himself to the barn, and Billy was singing his usual hymn of vespers to the little feeder.

Just within the stable door the Gov'nor found his father conversing in low tones with --was it?—the sheriff of the county, by all that's good!

"Reckon he's done found us out, dern him!" the Gov'nor soliloquized. "Er else come ter git paw fer jury. Seems 'f I never did lay out ter have some fun 't sumfin' didn't up an' spile it.".

Newman stood just within the stable door, and Sheriff Perkins, his hand upon the bridle rein of his showy horse, stood close beside the rancher.

The sheriff was a tall man, handsome and athletic, and a terror to the horse-thieves in all that region. He had almost cleared his county of these gentry, in fact, since his election to office the previous November.

The horse beside him--large, powerful, fullblooded, and high-mettled, accustomed to long night journeys through wild, desolate, dangerous places-well befitted the man whose light touch now upon the Spanish bits held the animal's fire in perfect check.

"Must 'a' been about three o'clock this mornin' they took 'em," the sheriff was saying, as the Gov'nor came up. Neither man paid any attention to the boy, going about his nightly duties with both large ears open to their widest.

"Three o'clock,” Newman said. "Lemme see, that 'd fetch 'em along yere nigh about half past four. Gov'nor," turning to the boy, "what time did you git up this

mornin'?"

The Gov'nor rested his pitchfork upon the manger in front of him, and mentally debated the question. His study was not at all necessary-only it was a habit of the Gov'nor's never to commit himself too hastily. He replied finally:

'Bout four."

"Well, Gov'nor," the sheriff broke in, "mebbe you didn't see no men with some horses a-goin' by here 'bout half past four?" "Mebbe I didn't," said the Gov'nor, serenely pitching down more hay.

For once, Sheriff Perkins was baffled. He did not know that the Gov'nor regarded him as an enemy, suspecting him of a deep design to stop the big hunt.

"Now looky yere, Gov'nor," Jim Newman said, "the Sheriff's a lookin' after some hoss thieves an' thinks mebbe they might 'a' gone by here in the night."

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Well, then," replied the boy, only a trifle mollified, he might 'a' said so. I didn't see no men ner hosses go by yere this mornin'. I reckon he's on the wrong trail."

"I reckon I am," Perkins mused. "I don't often git on the wrong trail, neither. Them fellers must 'a' gone up by Newhall way, an' through the San Francisquito. 'Lizabeth Lake 'll fetch 'em up fer a day er two, likely."

Oh, I'll ketch 'em, yit." Perkins was on his horse by this time. "So long!" he shouted from the shadows of the orchard road, down which the steady gallop of his thoroughbred was ringing.

The Gov'nor had finished his feeding now, and father and son stood together in the stable door with the clear moonlight upon their faces. These two had always regarded each other in a quaint fashion as equals.

"We'll likely run acrost them fellers he's after, ef they 're in the Matilija, wont we, paw?"

"No: I don't reckon we will. They're over in the San Emigdio by this time, most like. I don't much keer about runnin' acrost 'em neither."

“Well,” said the Gov'nor, I'd like to ketch 'em, an' help string 'em up," with which vicious speech the youthful "regulator" took his way toward the cow lot to see that the calves were properly fenced off from their mothers during the night.

Jim Newman started slowly toward the farmhouse. Even at the best of times he had no very consuming desire for the society of his help-meet.

"Paw," the Gov'nor called after him, "what time we want to start to-morrer ?"

"Jist before moonrise, I reckon. The boys is a comin' over, an' will pack an' start from here."

"Who's a goin' to run the place?"
"Jim Anderson 'll be over yere in the

ter mow that alfalfa, too.”

"All right."

CHAPTER II.

The "boys" came over in the afternoon. They were to have started just at moonrise; but what with feeding and packing and saddling, it was nearer eleven than eight o'clock when they got away.

All was ready at last. Horses were mounted, rifles shouldered, ugly-looking, long knives strapped at sides, and the hunters were riding down the orchard road

toward the big gate. toward the big gate. Billy and a nondescript animal known as the crop-eared mule were the sumpter bearers of the train. There were five men in the party, counting the Gov'nor-Ramon Soto, the guide and cook, a famous bear-hunter to this day in all that southern country, noted as the man who had killed four grizzlies with five bullets; old Jo Barton, a '49er, a prospector of the old school-a type now, alas, fast fading into the perspective of the yearskeen-eyed and enthusiastic, as young when following the trail of deer as even the Gov'nor himself; Jim Newman, with whom we are already acquainted-but who had, besides the characteristics already noted, a slight defect in hearing, which gave rise to amusing contretemps now and again; John Shelton, a "tenderfoot," a sojourner in the southern country for lung weakness, but an experienced Adirondack sportsman for all that, and as eager now as in his best days to renew the mad exhilaration that sets one's blood on fire when a wounded buck, stricken to the death, falls panting and sobbing in the chemisal; and the Gov'nor himself, elate in the possession of a long knife and a brand-new Winchester rifle.

John Shelton was of a class numerous enough. Barely twenty-five years old, in comfortable circumstances, a graduate of

Yale, he found the world opening fair before him--and then his life was blighted by the touch of the grim climatic destroyer. Now he waswhat Mrs. Newman termed "one o' them poor consumpted critters." With all the hopefulness of his class, he had thought that a winter in Southern California would "set him up;" and yet he had not seemed to gain strength rapidly. The poison was in his blood, and he came too late. Forsaking the Ojai hotel where he had made the acquaintance of Jo Barton, he was intent now upon a month of "roughing it" in the mountains.

From her kitchen door, Mrs. Newman drawls languidly: "Take keer o' that boy!"

"Reckon I kin take keer o' myself," the Gov'nor responds; and in single file, with clattering of pots and pans upon the cropeared mule, the train moves out of the orchard gate, into the silver softness of the broad river road and up the long stretch of Sleepy Hollow to where the mountains come down on either hand, and the river rushes out across a broad sycamore dotted flat from its home in a dark mountain gorge-Matilija Cañon. The home of Indian spectres, and hot sulphur waters; the birth-place of all that is wierd, and sad, and spectral in the dark mythology of the Santa Inez Indians.

Here a spring wagon comes rattling along the road, and its occupant hails the train: Hello, Barton, is that you?"

"This a-way," says Jo.
"Goin' after deer ?"

"Wa'al, we aint a-goin' arter fish."

"Who you got?"-meaning, who composed the party.

"You don't know none of 'em, I don't reckon. Anyways, they don't none of 'em know you."

"Well, success to you," and the wagon rattles on up into the darkness of the live oaks of Matiljia.

"Head off that jack," shouts Jo, for the social Billy has shown a disposition to get

Up the rocky defile, crossing again and again the glancing stream, to camp at last in the shadow of a great rock until daybreak.

Despite their almost all night ride, the hunters arise early-the fresh mountain air, the novelty of their surroundings, their nearness to the life-giving bosom of Mother Earth, the great morning wind that came. roaring down around the rocky angles of the cañon, and sundry pebbles that darkness had hidden underneath their unfolded blankets, all contributing to this.

Then a cup of steaming coffee, fragrant as the winds of Araby; and packs, and sad

dles, and riders are mounted, and so, through the glorious advancing of red-breaking day, the pack train moves on deeper into the wilderness, now ascending a ridge crowned with the low beauty of spreading manzanita, or, dark in the shadows of whispering pines, following the trail clinging upon a cliff far above the silvery murmur of some mountain stream.

They leave the trail, and are branching off into an unknown land. Only Ramon knows where the new route will lead them, for Jo, much as he frequents the mountains, is out of his reckoning now.

brushy, and seemingly inaccessible the ridge up which they must ride!

Ride, have I said? Not even so gallant a caballero as Ramon Soto dare ride up that precipitous slope.

"Aqui esta!" says the guide, pointing to the rocks, now seemingly so close at hand, and turning in his saddle to smile darkly upon his companions.

"Is them yer two rocks?" growls Jo. "Well, I bet ye can't never git no pack train up thar."

"Si, señor," Ramon replies, and turns resolutely to ascend the steep mountain side.

High upon the summit of a distant ridge to the north, two bold rocks, landmarks for twenty miles even in that mountainous country, rear their heads close together from a jungle of green brush, chemisal and scrub oak and manzanita, growing so thickly as to be all but impassable for man and beast; and nearer to the observers, but still to the northward, stands upon a bench-like mesa a solitary, stunted pine tree. The road lies between those rocks, Ramon has said, and by the foot of that tree. Once between the rocks they are safe, for beyond them the country is open-bare hills dotted with clumps of live oak. There is abundant water, that greatest of all requisites of California camp life. There are muchos venajos -much deer-also, in that promised land. Down over the swelling spur of hills, and they are riding up a long cañon, which widens here and there into bunch-grass grown potreros, in which there are sheep, but which grows steadily narrower as they approach its head.

The hills come down closer together now, and the cañon divides, the hunters taking the north fork and passing close beside the blasted pine tree. They ride around the point of the pine, following a sheep trail; and behold, the two rocks in plain view, but a short distance ahead-but how steep, and

and forth across the face of the ridge"snakin' it," Jo says.

The way grows steeper. They emerge from the thick brush. Only here and there are scattered manzanita bushes, but the footing now is hard sandstone, almost perpendicular, and the rocks are still high above.

Ramon has dismounted from his mustang, and is leading the trusty brute, stumbling and slipping up the rocky road, by the bridle. Incomparable error! Can any student of human nature tell me why great men sometimes err fatally at the most momentous crisis of life? Why should Ramon Soto, an experienced vaquero and mountaineer, lead his horse by the bridle on this occasion, instead of by the rawhide riata about the animal's neck? Leading by the bridle is precarious business at the best of times, especially with the Spanish bit. Lead by the bridle he did, nevertheless; but the rest of the party, dismounting, followed more slowly, leading by their riatas.

The burros, groaning beneath the weight of their packs, but more sure-footed than the horses, advanced alone, very slowly. They seemed to be almost lifted up the steep by the blasts of crude profanity that Jo sent hurtling out behind them-responding to each round oath as the good vaquero horse responds to the tip of the jingling spur.