"I presume you are able to
offer conclusive proofs of everything you have asserted?"
"Perfectly."
"I am going to the Mision Perdida now," said Captain Carroll,
quietly. "To-morrow I will bring you the answer--Peace or War."
He walked to the door, lifted his hand to his cap, with a brief
military salutation, and disappeared.
CHAPTER XI
As Captain Carroll urged his horse along the miry road to La Mision
Perdida, he was struck with certain changes in the landscape before
him other than those wrought by the winter rains. There were the
usual deep gullies and trenches, half-filled with water, in the
fields and along the road, but there were ominous embankments and
ridges of freshly turned soil, and a scattered fringe of timbers
following a cruel, undeviating furrow on the broad grazing lands of
the Mision. But it was not until he had crossed the arroyo that he
felt the full extent of the late improvements. A quick rumbling in
the distance, a light flash of steam above the willow copse, that
drifted across the field on his right, and he knew that the
railroad was already in operation. Captain Carroll reined in his
frightened charger, and passed his hand across his brow with a
dazed sense of loss. He had been gone only four months--yet he
already felt strange and forgotten.
It was with a feeling of relief that he at last turned from the
high-road into the lane. Here everything was unchanged, except
that the ditches were more thickly strewn with the sodden leaves of
fringing oaks and sycamores.
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