Sacrament, get up!"
Still no effect. Concho began to feel uneasy; never before had a mule of
pious lineage failed to respond to this kind of exhortation. He made one
more desperate attempt:
"Ah, defiler of the altar! lie not there! Look!" he threw his hand into
the air, extending the fingers suddenly. "Behold, fiend! I exorcise
thee! Ha! tremblest! Look but a little now,--see! Apostate!
I--I--excommunicate thee,--Mula!"
"What are you kicking up such a devil of row down there for?" said a
gruff voice from the rocks above.
Concho shuddered. Could it be that the devil was really going to fly
away with his mule? He dared not look up.
"Come now," continued the voice, "you just let up on that mule, you
d----d old Greaser. Don't you see she's slipped her shoulder?"
Alarmed as Concho was at the information, he could not help feeling to a
certain extent relieved. She was lamed, but had not lost her standing as
a good Catholic.
He ventured to lift his eyes. A stranger--an Americano from his dress
and accent--was descending the rocks toward him. He was a slight-built
man with a dark, smooth face, that would have been quite commonplace and
inexpressive but for his left eye, in which all that was villainous in
him apparently centered. Shut that eye, and you had the features and
expression of an ordinary man; cover up those features, and the eye
shone out like Eblis's own. Nature had apparently observed this too, and
had, by a paralysis of the nerve, ironically dropped the corner of the
upper lid over it like a curtain, laughed at her handiwork, and turned
him loose to prey upon a credulous world.
"What are you doing here?" said the stranger after he had assisted
Concho in bringing the mule to her feet, and a helpless halt.
"Prospecting, Senor."
The stranger turned his respectable right eye toward Concho, while his
left looked unutterable scorn and wickedness over the landscape.
"Prospecting, what for?"
"Gold and silver, Senor,--yet for silver most."
"Alone?"
"Of us there are four."
The stranger looked around.
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