“Oh, we’ll pilgrim along a while, an’ then drop ’em after dark somewhar near the Quijotoas,” laughed Big John. “Fine work, Injun! I reckon we’re shut of that outfit for a piece, eh, boys?”
“Not to be a crape-hanger, I’d say that we won’t see another Mexican unless it’s a bunch of guerrillas down near Pinacate,” said Sid.
“Shore! More fun!” grinned Big John. “Them rebel greasers has Mausers—but they cayn’t hit nawthin’ with them. Hope that Vasquez person aims to round ’em up an’ bring ’em along. ’Twell be some fine li’l party, I’m settin’ hyar to tell ye.”
They rode on and dropped the Papago ponies shortly before pushing through the pass in the Quijotoas to Poso Blanco. There they encountered a new village of Papagoes and the inhabitants lined up to watch them go by. Big John, nothing loath, bought oats from them, as friendly as friendly! They, of course, had heard nothing of the row over at Red Tank. Some of them even did their best to sell the party baskets!
“Shore, but a runner from Red Tank will git in hyar late to-night, fellers,” quoth Big John, as they rode out on the desert once more. “This lot of Injuns’ll be some surprised, I’m thinkin’! We’ll water at Poso Blanco an’ pull our freight for ole Montezuma Haid early to-morrow morning, or the hull kadoodle will be on our heels.”
After dark a dry camp was made, in a patch of mesquite and palo verde, a long distance out from Poso Blanco. It had been a hard day of riding! Fifty miles, in all, had they covered, and now the country was changing from gray to red, and lava began to show up, black and glowering under the horses’ hoofs.
It was sharp and chilly in the dark before dawn when Big John roused out the camp next morning. “Now, fellers, we’ll water for the last time at Wall’s Well by sun-up, an’ then make a long pull through the gap in the Growlers, which-same brings us to Represa Tanks on the Camino del Diablo. You-all hev never been thar, an’ hev no idee what it’s like, but the Spaniards told the truth, fer once, when they named it the Road of the Devil. Thar’s always water in Represa, an’ from thare we kin work out to Cerro Colorado, the first of them extinct volcanoes. If Red Mesa’s twenty mile northeast of Pinacate, as that pottery slate says, you’ll see her from thar.”
The horses, freshened and invigorated with grass feed and the cool of night, led off spiritedly, all four riding together in a bunch. In two hours more the sky began to lighten in the east and then a shaft of red sunlight struck into living fire the top of a mountain that rose ahead of them, solitary and shrouded like a monk—Montezuma’s Head. Sid held his breath in wonderment, to see the red bath of color spread down the flanks of that huge and imposing presence, widening and broadening its base with color, bringing out the vivid green posts of saguarros, the dark greens of creosote, and the white patches of barrel cactus wrapped in their dense mantles of thorns. They were in the heart of the giant cactus country now. The floor of the desert was dotted all over with them. Everywhere their weird candelabra shapes stood like sentinels, upholding bent and contorted arms, notes of bright green on a gray and pale green waste.
As they rode nearer, Sid raised a shout of discovery. “First organ pipe cactus!” he whooped, pointing excitedly. “See it? Up yonder on the hill!”
Out of a cleft in the rock rose a nest of what seemed to be tall and crooked green horns, bunched together like some coral growth of the depths of the sea. A queer plant, but all this country was filled with these dry-soil and water-storing species, and nature did queer things with them to make them able to survive.