They were off down the cañon and into the yellow basin of El Infiernillo. Guadalupe, riding for the first time in the white man’s smell-wagon, gripped his seat with the delicious fear of a child on a merry-go-round. He watched the movements of the doctor’s foot on the gear-shift, marvelling that the beast concealed in pipes and rods answered each downward thrust with a roar. Earth spun under him as if Elder Brother himself, master of all created things, had a hold on it and were pulling it all one way.
Down and down into the untracked miles of Altar. A single iron post on a hill marking the Line. The sierra of Pinacate cinder-red in the south for a beacon. Right and left sheet iron ranges with stipples of rust where the camisa grew. Mirage quivering into nothingness just as its false waters were ready to be parted by the car’s wheels.
They came upon an east-and-west track in the sand—the Road of the Dead Men—and turned westward upon it. Away off to the north and east a spiral dust cloud walked across the wastes along the skirts of the mountains. Guadalupe pointed to it with an ejaculation in his own tongue. A sign—a sign! There was the place of the mission!
The Doc felt his internals quiver in expectation. Prickles of excitement played in fingers that gripped the wheel. Automatically he began to hum an ancient bar-room ditty.
The Papago indicated where he should turn off the road in the direction of a great gap in the mountains, into which the desert flowed as a sea. Here the mesquite lifted from its crouch and flourished in a five-foot growth—true index of hidden waters. The car made hard going, what with brittle twigs that caught at its tires and the cholla creeping like a spined snake to threaten punctures. At his guide’s word Doc Stooder stopped. Both scrambled out.
Before moving a step the Doc must have a ceremonial drink, a preliminary he did not deem necessary to share with Guadalupe. The man’s big hands trembled as he raised the bottle to his lips; his eyes were shining with gold lust.
Guadalupe stood for several minutes slowly swinging his head from landmark to landmark, his eyes following calculated lines through the scrub. Then he commenced a slow pacing through the close-set aisles of the greasewood and cactus, bearing in a wide circle. He peered into the core of each shrub, kicked at every naked stub of root and branch appearing above the surface. The Doc, cursing and humming alternately, was right at his shoulder.
An hour passed—two. The sun, now high, burned mercilessly. Still Guadalupe pursued a narrowing circle through the scrub. Of a sudden the Indian gurgled and dropped to his knees beside a salt-bush. He whipped out his knife and began hacking at the tough stubs of branches near the soil. The Doc, slavering in his excitement, dropped beside him and looked into the heart of the salt-bush. He saw nothing but a rounded slab of rock.
Guadalupe finished his knife work and started to dig with his hands. Terrier-like he pawed a hole away from what Stooder had taken for a rock. The smooth black surface began to curve outward in a form too symmetrical for nature’s work; it was rounded and gradually flaring.
Guadalupe dug on. Blood pounded in the Doc’s ears. Snatches of song trickled from his lips.