And now on the turf beneath the memorials Don Manuel, with lingering fingers, dropped the roses here and there, as if to rest with their beauty and their fragrance on the forms of his beloved dead. The last bloom fluttered to the ground. Then, standing erect, hands upraised, no words uttered, but with the unspoken words none the less reverberating through his very soul, he vowed once again the vendetta which he had sworn on the identical spot thirty long years before. When he turned to leave the tiny hamlet of the dead, a wonderful transformation had come over his countenance. The placid calm was gone; the fierce fire of implacable hatred and unswervable resolve burned in his eyes. He had bidden adieu to all the softer things in this life. His sole concern now was with the enemy whom he had marked down for death that night. CHAPTER XXXV—At Comanche Point BEN THURSTON, during the afternoon, seated in his big armchair, had first nodded over a newspaper and then dropped off to sleep. He was awakened by a touch on the shoulder—rudely awakened, for he jumped to his feet, and in a dazed way glared at the disturber. “Excuse me,” apologized Leach Sharkey, “but I want to remind you that this is the afternoon when we are to meet that old Portugee I told you about.” “I need no reminder,” was the gruff reply. “I am ready to start when you are. By the way, what’s the fellow’s name?” “José, he said. He claims to know every nook and corner in the range. Has lived in the mountains for many years; keeps goats and bees, and shoots a mountain lion occasionally, earning the bounty as well as getting the skin.” “Shoots,” echoed Thurston, somewhat nervously. “Oh, that was in his younger days mostly, I fancy. Today he is a tottering old man who couldn’t hold a rifle straight if he tried. But he’s well acquainted with the mountains, that’s the main thing. He tells me he has known where Dick Willoughby is hiding since the very day after he broke jail.” “Then why didn’t he come to me?” “Because he knew nothing about the reward. But at our very first chance meeting among the hills I very soon made five thousand dollars look mighty good to him. By gad, you should have seen his eyes pop and his hands tremble.” “It is a fortune for such a man.” “That’s what got him. He has been supplying Willoughby with goats’ milk, but is paid only two bits a quart. So he grabbed at my bait like a hungry coyote. You have the money ready, I suppose? Treasury bills—that’s what he stipulated for, because he’s too frail to hump a sack of gold around.” “The money is in that wallet on my desk. You had better carry it.” Sharkey stepped across the room and shoved a fat leather wallet into the breast pocket of his coat. “So frail, is he?” Thurston went on, musingly. “Well, I needn’t take a gun.” Sharkey smiled. He knew Ben Thurston’s timidity in even handling a revolver, and the man’s abject reliance on his armed bodyguard.