“Why, Julia,” soliloquized Morning, “you must have been browsing on rattle-weed! What is the matter with you?”—and he tugged vainly at her bridle. Whizz! whizz! went the arrows. With one shaft quivering in her flank, the mule fairly sprang into the air, while the other transfixed the left arm of David Morning, and pinned it to his side. And then his question was answered, and he knew what was the matter with Julia. The frenzied animal leaped the Rillito at a bound, and swept across the valley to the corral adjoining the Gonzales ranch house. Once within the inclosure, she stopped and uttered her most melodious notes of delight. With a crescendo of welcome a dozen of her kindred greeted Julia, and the swarthy major-domo of the ranch, accompanied by half a dozen vaqueros with lights, rushed out, and Morning, weak from pain and loss of blood, was half-led and half-carried into the ranch house. The Señor Don Pedro Gonzales a year before had journeyed into Paradise, from the effects of an attack of mountain fever, aggravated by too copious use of mescal, and left his ranch houses and corral, his two hundred mules and horses, his two thousand cattle, his brand of G on a triangle, and his rancho Santa Ysbel to his señora, the Donna Maria, who, with her family, continued to occupy the place. Messengers dispatched to Tucson returned with physicians, who cut out the arrow and found that the wound was severe, and its result might be fatal. They agreed that for Morning to endeavor to travel with such a wound would be simply suicide, and that he must not attempt to leave the shelter and care which the hospitable Gonzales family were glad to accord him. CHAPTER XI. “It is only mirage.” A long, low, adobe building, roofed with tiles of pottery clay, situated near the banks of the river Santa Cruz. Long rows of cottonwood-trees spread their branches nearly over the little stream, and the graceful masses of pepper, combed to a fringe, drop their courtesied obeisance to every passing breeze, and throw their uneasy shadows well over the walls, neatly stuccoed with cobblestones. The air curdles with the heat rising from the arid plain, and hangs, a shimmering sheet of translucent vapor, between the eye and the ever-lengthening distance, which softly melts into the Santa Rita Mountains.