execution, in case the mules were not returned in a given time.
The animals, of course, did not come back, and the Indians, a dozen or more, were punctually suspended to the nearest tree, and Jim was hung among the rest. He said he was hung by mistake; and was very confident there was no intention of hanging him, but that he got mixed up with the rest, and that men who did not know his face suspended him, where he hung all day by the neck till it got very dark, when they took him down and told him they were very sorry. He added mournfully, that his nerves had never been reliable since.
We pushed our little Spanish mules along the worn trail that stretched across the mountain. At noon we came down to the McCloud, which we found too deep to ford, and therefore bore up the stream a little way till we could find a lodge and log canoe. It looked so very lonely. Here stood lodges, but they were empty. There, on a point where I had left a thriving, prosperous village, the rye grass grew rank and tall as our shoulders as we rode along. The lodges stood still as of old. An Indian never tears down his house. It will serve to shelter some one who is lost or homeless ; besides, there is a superstition which forbids it. From one of these lodges a small black wolf started out and stole swiftly across the hill. When a white man leaves a habitation he changes the face of things ; an Indian leaves them unimpaired. His deserted house is the perfect body
