"It is morning."
"I don'd toldt you so! Vell, dot peats der pand!"
Hans got up and dressed with great reluctance, yawning, and declaring over and over that the nights in Mexico were not more than fifteen or twenty minutes in length.
The landlord had prepared a special breakfast for them, and it proved the best they had found since leaving "the States," so they ate heartily and felt much better afterward.
After breakfast the landlord himself informed them that he had been able to obtain a guide.
"He is the very person you want, young señors, for he knows the desert and he knows the mountains. You may depend on him to lead you straight across to Huejugilla el Alto."
The guide was waiting for them, wrapped to his chin in a crimson poncho, and smoking a cigarette. He was a dark-faced, somewhat sinister-looking fellow, and he gave his name as Pedro.
While Frank did not like the appearance of the man, he felt that it was not policy to delay longer, and a bargain was soon made. Pedro not only agreed to take them quickly across the desert, but he contracted to furnish horses for them.
The forenoon was not far advanced when they rode out of Zacatecas, and, with the sun at their backs, headed toward the west.
Before the day passed Pedro showed by many things that he was quite familiar with the desert. He knew where shade and water were to be found, and, at noonday, they rested long beside a spring, with the sun beating on the wide waste of sand, over which the heat haze danced, and where no cooling breath seemed astir.