The sun rose round and hot, the same as usual; the south wind came up and blew into a bellying mass of clouds, which lashed back with the accustomed rain; and when all the earth was washed clean and fresh the last trace of the struggle was gone. Only by the burns on his hands was Hooker aware of the fight and of the treachery which had reared its head against him like a snake which has been warmed and fed. Nowhere but in Mexico, where the low _pelado_ classes have made such deeds a subtlety, could the man be found to dissimulate like that false assassin-in-chief. To pause suddenly in a protracted speech, swing over and pick up a gun, and halt his victim for the shooting by the preparatory click of the lock--that indeed called for a brand of cunning rarely found in the United States. There was one thing about the affair that vaguely haunted Hooker--why was it that a man so cunning as that had failed to load his gun? Twice, and with everything in his favor, he had raised his rifle to fire; and both times it had snapped in his hands. Certainly he must have been inept at arms--or accustomed to single-shot guns. The reputed magic of the swift-firing rifles evidently had been his undoing, but where had he got his new gun? And who was he, anyway? With those two baffling questions Bud wrestled as he sat beside his door, and at evening his answer came. The sun was swinging low and he was collecting wood down the gulch for a fire when, with a sudden thud of hoofs, a horseman rounded the point and came abruptly to a halt. It was Aragon, and he was spying on the camp. For a full minute he scanned the house, tent, and mine with a look so snaky and sinister that Bud could read his heart like a book. Here was the man who had sent the assassins, and he had come to view their work! Very slowly Bud's hand crept toward his six-shooter, but, slight as was the motion, Aragon caught it and sat frozen in his place. Then, with an inarticulate cry, he fell flat on his horse's neck and went spurring out of sight. The answer to Bud's questions was very easy now. The Mexican who had led the attempt on his life was one of Aragon's bad men, one of the four gunmen whom Hooker had looked over so carefully when they came to drive him from the mine, and Aragon had fitted him out with new arms to make the result more sure. But with that question answered there came up another and another until, in a sudden clarity of vision, Bud saw through the hellish plot and beheld himself the master. As man to man, Aragon would not dare to face him now, for he knew that he merited death. By his sly approach, by the look in his eyes and the dismay of his frenzied retreat, he had acknowledged more surely than by words his guilty knowledge of the raid. Coming to a camp where he expected to find all dead and still, he had found himself face to face with the very man he had sought to kill. How, then, had the American escaped destruction, and what had occurred to his men?