From its summit they saw a wide arboreal desert stretching away below, bounded on the west by a red, saw-tooth range of silent mountains. The rays of the setting sun swept across the plain, lighting up each saguarro pole in a spike of vivid green. But over in the hills to the east was coming a long file of riders—the Papagoes! They wound down a defile, galloping at full speed, and a tiny horseman swathed in a flying, striped serapé led them.
“Now, fellers, we shore got a race ahead of us!” declared Big John. “We’ll make for Red Tank, out thar in the middle of this valley. See them two little ’dobe houses? That’s her. Head for them ef any of ye git separated.”
Across the waste of creosote bushes, choyas and giant cactus that was the Baboquivari Desert galloped the whole party, heading due west toward the red water pond which lies about the center of it. Near its borders Sid could see the two ’dobe Papago houses, still ten miles off, yet they showed as tiny landmarks, even more noticeable than the many-branched giant saguarros which dotted the plain. Beyond them rose the Quijotoa mountains, abrupt and sheer, bare as the ribbed sides of a cliff. They were twenty miles away, but seemed quite neighborly, a refuge to ride for, a place for a stand-off fight if need be.
“Gee!—regular movie stuff!” chortled Sid to Scotty as he looked back over his shoulder again. Vasquez and his muster of motley Papagoes were crossing from the east but had not gained a yard on them yet. But they surely would, by the time those ’dobe houses were reached! The horses could keep their distance easily—at first. In time these tireless Indian mustangs would ride them down, sure as death!
“We’ll stop and stand ’em off from those ’dobe houses, eh?” answered Scotty. “My old .405 will be the boy then, you bet!”
“Won’t be no movie scrap, nohow!” growled Big John back from where he and Niltci were breaking trail. “The real thing don’t pan out that way. Ride, fellers! All tarnation won’t stop these horses from drinkin’ up the pond when we git thar, an’ we gotto make time so’s to let ’em do it. You, Blaze,” he stormed at the big Airedale loping along beside him, “I gotto turn ye loose, now, spite of thorns ketchin’ yore coat. Cayn’t take no more chances with this leader.”
Big John hauled up the huge furry Airedale on his saddle as he rode, unsnapped the leash and let him drop again. Twice before during the race the white mustang and Blaze had run on different sides of the same bush—with almost disastrous results but he had been still more afraid of thorns catching and holding the woolly-coated Airedale. Ruler had no such danger. The big hound loped along easily beside Sid’s pinto and his sleek sides passed the thorns like silk.
In half an hour more of twisting and turning through the arboreal desert seven miles of the distance had been covered. They still maintained perhaps two miles of lead over the Papagoes, in spite of the furious urgings and gesticulations of their leader in the striped serapé.
Big John glanced a sardonic eye back at him occasionally. “Greaser—I’d plumb dote on stoppin’ a leetle lead with ye!” the boys heard him mutter through his clenched teeth, as he galloped along. “But them good old days is gone forever, now. We gotto put up a tin-horn game on ye instead.”
Just what the hoax was going to be neither Sid nor Scotty could conjecture, but they knew Big John’s resourcefulness of old. They rode on silently, wondering, nursing the horses around the surprising twists and turns that Niltci ahead saw fit to make, usually to avoid great beds of bristly choyas. Both the mare and the pinto were breathing heavily now, and snorting in labored wheezes through their foaming nostrils. The pace was beginning to tell! The ’dobe houses loomed up not two miles off, but behind them came that tireless knot of Papago riders, light and lithe, and they could keep this up all day!