"It looks like it. We'll hev to go into camp, and scout around till we find a pass. But it wasn't any use follerin' the cavalry arter we found they was bound west."
"That's so. It won't do for us to come out on the Pacific slope. It's Mexico or Texas for us."
"We'd better say Santa Fe."
"They'd make us give too close an account of ourselves there. Some of the boys might let out somethin'."
"Guess it's Mexico, then. That isn't far away now. But I wish I knew the way down out of this."
The ruins, strange and wonderful as they were, did not seem to excite any great degree of curiosity among those men. They talked about them, to be sure, but in a way which showed that they had all seen the same sort of thing before during their wild rovings among the mountains and valleys of the great Southwest.
Just such ruins are to be found in a great many places. We do not even know how many, and nobody has been able yet to more than guess by whom they were built or when.
Mere ravines and gorges and cañons would not do for this party. They must find a regular "pass," down which they could manage to take their horses and mules and wagons. Even before they halted, several of them had been looking and pointing toward what Murray had spoken of as "the western gap."
That was the opening through the ranges which had been for a moment such a temptation to Steve Harrison.
"It's west'ard, Bill, but it may hev to do for us."