"Not precisely through the heart, but along its southern border."
"They'll try to make it lively for us, I suppose?"
"They will certainly watch us closely, and will take advantage of any carelessness on our part."
"Do you think there is any chance of our finding Manuel Perea?"
"Hardly; he is too far off our route. We cannot leave the train to look him up."
There was a suspicious choke in the voice of the little corporal when he said: "It is awful to think we are going so near the dear old boy and can do nothing for him. Only think of his poor mother!"
"I was told at the fort that she has offered five thousand dollars to the man who will bring Manuel to her," said Frank. "I wish I could bring him in for nothing."
"Brenda says she believes we shall find him somehow," Henry said. "I hope she is right, for I saw his mother at Algodones and promised her to rescue him or become a prisoner with him."
"So she wrote me at Los Pinos," I replied. "Well, something may turn up to enable us to serve his mother. Let us go to bed."
Next morning we were again on the road by starlight. A march of sixteen miles brought us to Agua Fria—cold water. Less than a hundred yards west of the spring was a ridge which did not rise fifty feet above it, and that was the "backbone" of the continent. The water of Agua Fria flowed into the Atlantic; the springs on the other side of the ridge flowed into the Pacific.