o size up the prospects at Soledad. I
wonder if Perez has no white help at all around that place. We did not
even see the foreman."

"He's a half-breed, that Juan Gonsalvo. The Indians don't like him.
He's from down Hermosillo way, and not like these Piman children of
nature. He and Conrad are up to some devilment, but Whitely thinks
Juan took the job, deluded as we are, with the notion that a gold mine
was sticking up out of the ground at the Soledad corrals, and it was
to be his find. You see, Bub, that story has gone the length of
Mexico, and even over to Spain. Oh, we are not the only trailers of
ghost gold; there are others!"

The slanting sun was sending shadows long on the levels, and the hills
were looming to the east in softest tones of gray and amethyst; the
whitish green of desert growths lay between, and much of brown desert
yet to cross.

"We can't make the foothills tonight even though there is an early
moon," decided Kit. "But we can break camp at dawn and make it before
the sun is high, and the water will hold out that long."

"It will hold for Buntin' and the mules, but what of Pardner?" asked
the older man. "He's not used to this hard pan gravel scratching."

"But he's thoroughbred, and he can stand it twelve hours more if I
can, can't you, old pal?" The tall roan with the dot of black between
the eyes returned his owner's caress by nosing his bare neck, and the
hand held up to smooth the black mane.

"I'll be glad enough to see him safe across the border in old
Arizona," observed Pike. "I can't see how the herders saved him for
you at Mesa Blanca when their own stock was picked of its best for the
various patriots charging through the settlements."

"Some way, Miguel, the Indian vaquero, managed it, or got his girl to
hide it out. Whitely confessed that his Indian cattlemen are the most
loyal he can find down here."

"But it's not a white man's land--yet, and I'm downright glad he's
shipped his family north. There's always hell enough in Sonora, but
it's a dovecote to what it's bound to be before the end comes, and so,
it's no place for white men's wives."

"Right you are! Say, what was it Whitely heard down in Sinaloa
concerning the Enchanted Canon mine?"

"Oh, some old priest's tale--the same dope we got with a different
slant to it. The gold nuggets from some shrine place where the water
gushed _muy fuerte_, by a sycamore tree. Same old nuggets sent out
with the message, and after that