Sid spoke up on this prompting: “We know well that all that country has been explored since the earliest times by the Spaniards,” he contributed. “Sonoyta has been inhabited by them for over two hundred years, and one of their oldest missions is San Xavier, the one for Papago Indians who used to hunt all that country. The friars were Dominicans—D.O.M., you see. This Fra Pedro undoubtedly got his information from some Papago visitors to the pueblo tribes. He made that pottery record and had it fired while proselyting among the pueblos of the San Pedro River—probably named the river himself after his patron saint. It all fits in, see, John? Then he got wounded or hurt, somehow, in the general massacre of the friars in 1680 and died in the refuge of that cavate dwelling. The Indians buried his plaque with him in a sort of kiva. The thing seems straight enough to me,” concluded Sid.
“Me too!” grinned Big John. “I gotto nurse you two pisen mean young reptyles down into that no-man’s land—I see that!” he snorted. “Waal, le’s git back to yore camp, Scotty, an’ I’ll git the outfit ready. Niltci’s goin’, of course. We gotto hev at least one Injun down in that country. Thar’s lots of mountain sheep down thar, an’ that means hoss feed, galleta grass. We’ll git a few pronghorns (antelope), mebbe, out’n them lava craters. Ef the tanks is not dry, we kin resk it.”
CHAPTER III
VASQUEZ
LEAVING Big John and Niltci hard at work making pemmican from the cougar and deer meat, and bags of pinole or parched corn meal from corn purchased at a near-by Apache encampment, Sid and Scotty rode a day’s march through the mountains to where there was a mission school—San Mateo of the Apaches. Scotty’s idea was to get the Red Mesa tablet translated by the teacher, who no doubt still remembered his Latin.
A small adobe schoolhouse of primitive Spanish architecture came in sight shortly after noon, surmounting a little knoll in the mountains. As they rode toward it Indian children, boys and girls, came running and yelling around them to beg pennies, and with them as an escort they rode up to the hitching rail before the school, dismounted and entered.
A lone Mexican teacher, poor and of uncertain temper apparently, sat reading at the school desk as they entered. With an annoyed exclamation in Spanish he put down his book and came toward them during the time that their eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light of the interior of the building.
“And what can I do for the señores?” inquired the man suspiciously, after the usual polite Spanish greetings had been exchanged.
Sid had already sized him up with a sense of misgiving, even then, before a word of their object had been disclosed. The Mexican—his nationality oozed out all over him—was a little weazened man, dirty, old, with one eye drooping nearly shut from some violent slash gotten during his past history. His face bore a sardonic, cynical, rascally expression, even under the smooth suavity of the crooked smile that now leered upon them. Sid felt like taking Scotty’s arm and leading him away, right then and there! Surely this man was no one to trust with such a mining secret as might be written on the Red Mesa tablet.
But Scotty had already guilelessly begun explaining their visit. His simple, “We have a Latin inscription here, señor, that we would like you to translate for us,” had settled it, for the man was already holding out his hand for the plaque which Scotty bore.
“You understand Latin, señor?” put in Sid, hoping that he didn’t.