The first glow of the sun painted for the ever watchful pilot a picture beyond the possibilities of brush and canvas. Here and there out of the blackness below sprang rosy points, the sun-tinted peaks of the Tunit Chas. Down the mountain sides, like rivers of silver pink, fell the sun's light. Then the valleys began to open out of the chasm of night-dark canyons wrought in the wilderness of the mountain sides. Here and there, oases left by the devastating hand of time, rose high plateaus, tree-crowned and verdant. And then, higher up among the white peaks, sentinel-like, stood giant tables whose brown tops and precipitous sides told of inaccessible and arid wastes. "And somewhere," said Ned to himself, "in this Titanic chaos lies the object of our search."
Starting at half speed, Ned had soon reduced the engine to quarter speed. When he aroused his sleeping companions Wilson's peak, their chief landmark, was just in sight far behind. His calculations placed the present location of the Cibola thirty miles from the Chusco river and just over the eastern Tunit Chas Mountains.
"All hands turn to," shouted Ned cheerily, "and stand by to make a landing."
There was a scramble, a rubbing of yet sleepy eyes and then an outburst of admiring wonder. The Cibola had sailed over two broken ridges enclosing an irregular, broken valley and was now looking down on a shelf-like plateau abutting on the second ridge and west of it. On three sides the plateau dropped precipitately into a lower rock-strewn, valley. On its eastern side it joined the still higher ridge. A pine forest crowned the top of the shelf-like mountain side and then ran up to the higher slopes until the carpet of green faded into the brown wastes of the timber line. In the very center of the wilderness of trees glistened a little lake of mountain water. From it the silver thread of a rivulet wormed its way for a mile or more among the trees and then trickled over the side of the cliff in a vapory waterfall.
Ned had swung the Cibola into a wide curve and the balloon and car were soon directly over the mountain creek. He threw the aeroplane guides downward and the slowly moving car drifted lower until it was but four hundred feet above the water and the overhanging pines. Then, following the water course beneath, the air ship floated back into the woods and the little lake widened out beneath them. Two deer, at the water's edge, stood unalarmed. On the south of the lake a grassy opening indicated Ned's destination.
"Here," he explained, "we can make a safe landing. It is an ideal place for a camp, with plenty of firewood and water."
"And meat, too," interrupted Alan, pointing to the deer.
"Venison and bear meat too, no doubt," laughed Ned.
From the top of a dead pine tree an eagle rose and soared lazily away.
"It's like the camping out places you read about," exclaimed Bob. "That eagle nest completes the picture."