and Vasquez himself was observed standing near the house. A white horse belonging to Chavez was bolting, and a mounted man was giving chase.

No doubt the under-sheriff and his rangers had their game in front, but how were they to seize it in the snare? The battery was masked, the garrison unknown. If any one were at the look-out in the hills, Vasquez would be warned of their approach, and with a start of ten minutes he could defy them to run him down. Even from his window, their approach would be observed a mile off, giving the murderers time to run for shelter to the woods.

Chance brought assistance to the rangers, for a Mexican team drove up from the direction of Greek George's ranch. Johnson seized this waggon, bade his men picket their steeds, crawl into the wagon, and lie flat down. Each ranger had his rifle ready for the fray. Putting a pistol to the driver's ear, Johnson told him to shut his mouth, and drive back towards Greek George's ranch. In a few minutes they were at the fence. The team stopped, the rangers leaped out. Two of the party ran to the west side, four made for the front. A

female, opening the door, and seeing so many armed men, raised a scream, and tried to close the door in their faces; but the rangers were too quick for her, and, tearing in, some of them caught sight of Vasquez leaping through a slit in the adobe wall. A bullet grazed him as he sprang. "There he goes through the window,' cried the ranger who had fired. Lighting on his feet in the garden, Vasquez looked around, as if in doubt. There stood his horse, if he had only time to mount.

the copse, if he had only time to hide.

bullet struck him, and he reeled and fell.

There grew

A second
Bounding

to his feet, like a wild cat, he glared from ranch to road, from horse to copse. A third shot smote him. Blood was flowing from his face and from his side. The game was over; he threw up his hands.

'Señor, you have done well,' he said to the undersheriff, who arrested him; I have been fooled, but it is all my fault.' He spake no more.

The rangers laid him on a pallet in the court yard, believing he was near his end. A tress of black hair and photographs of two children were found in his vest. The lock of hair was tied in a

bit of blue ribbon.

The photographs, he said, were

pictures of his children. Of the tress he would say nothing; but he gave the lock to Johnson, as a brave man; 'a brave man like myself—a brave man like myself,' he added more than once; begging the under-sheriff to preserve it with the care of a gentleman till he asked for it again. Then he lay down on his pallet, fainting from loss of blood.

Adon Leiva was avenged.

CHAPTER XI.

LOVE AND DEATH.

THOUGH Capitan Vasquez never sighed in vain to señorita, he nursed a great contempt for women.

'Do you think a woman had to do with your arrest?'

6

No, surely not,' replies the brigand with a sneer: 'I never trusted women in my life.'

'Not with the secret of your hiding-places in the hills?'

'No, Señor; I never put myself in any woman's power, by telling her a secret that could do me injury.'

Yet men may be betrayed who never give their trust, even to the women they profess to love. His wounds being dressed, the brigand has been brought to San Jose, where he is nearer to the white settlements, than at Los Angeles. At San Jose, he is overshadowed by the power of San Francisco.

San Jose, one of the Free Towns, has, like Los Angeles, a lower class of mongrel breed and vicious life; one of the great sinks from which such chiefs as Soto and Vasquez draw their bands. But these bad elements in the town, though rough and noisy, quail before the steady courage of the upper class -White men of British race, who having grown rich as advocates and physicians, bankers and merchants, have built their country houses on Coyote Creek ; converting a camp of troops and squaws, with their unruly progeny, into a paradise of villas, colleges, and schools. These new comers are enrolled as vigilants, and are masters of the town.

While waiting trial, Vasquez is behaving like a true half-breed, lying in the faces of his friends, boasting of his noble deeds, and acting basely towards the woman who has wrecked her soul for him. He tells all those who go to see him, that he never killed a man in his life-not even Davidson. Leiva, he says, shot all the three men who were butchered at Tres Pinos. Having won Rosalia's love, in fair rivalry against her husband, he asserts that Leiva, like a jealous cur, betrayed him to the sheriffs out of envy at the preference of his wife.