"What is it, chief?"
"Indians," he said. "White girl come down to river to drink; then she lay down here; then Indians come along; you see footprints on soft earth of bank; they catch her when asleep and carry her off. Teczuma and the Wolf have looked; no marks of little feet; four feet deeper marks than when they came along; Indian carry her off."
"Perhaps they have taken her along the river to some ford, and carried her up to their village."
"Soon see;" and he and the Wolf moved along the bank, the others following at a short distance, having first taken off their horses' bridles, allowing them to take a good drink, and turned them loose to feed.
"Small men," the chief said, when Will with the two chief vaqueros came up to him. "Short steps; got spears and bows."
"How on earth does he know that?" Will said, when the words were translated to him. Sancho pointed to a round mark on the ground.
"There is the butt end of a spear, and I dare say the chief has noticed some holes of a different shape made by the ends of bows."
Half a mile farther the bluffs approached the river and bordered it with a perpendicular cliff, which had doubtless been caused by the face of the hill being eaten away by the river countless ages before. The stream was here some thirty yards from the foot of the cliff. More and more puzzled at the direction in which Clara had been carried, the trackers followed. They had gone a hundred yards along the foot of the cliff when a great stone came bounding down from above, striking the ground a few yards in front of the Indians, who leaped back. Almost instantly a shrill voice shouted from above, and, looking up, they saw a number of natives on a ledge a hundred feet above them, with bows bent threateningly.
"Back, all of you!" Sancho shouted. "Their arrows may be poisoned."
Seeing, however, that the party retreated in haste, the Indians did not shoot; when a short distance away a council was held, and all returned to their horses, mounted, and swam the river; then they rode along to view the cliff. Three or four openings were seen on the level of the ledge on which the Indians were posted, and Will was astonished to see that above, the cliff, which was here quite perpendicular, was covered with strange sculptures, some of which still retained the colour with which they had in times long past been painted.