boulders, fell silent after the little exchange of
confidence as to choice of trail. Once Kit left the gully and climbed
the steep grade to the mesa alone to view the landscape over, but slid
and scrambled down,--hot, dusty, and vituperative.

"Not a sign of life but some carrion crows moving around in the blue
without flop of a wing," he grumbled. "Who started the dope that
mankind is the chosen of the Lord? Huh! we have to scratch gravel for
all we rake in but the birds of the air have us beat for desert travel
all right, all right!"

"Well, Bub, if you saw no one's dust it must be that gang were not
headed for Palomitas or Whitely's."

"They could strike Palomitas, and circle over to the east road without
striking Whitely's home corrals," said Kit thoughtfully.

"Sure they could, but what's the object? If it's cattle or horses
they're after the bigger ranch is the bigger haul?"

"Yes,--if it's stock they're after," agreed Kit somberly.

"Why, lad, what--what's got you now?"

"I reckon it's the damned buzzards," acknowledged the younger man. "I
don't know what struck me as I sat up there watching them. Maybe it's
their blackness, maybe it's their provender, maybe it was just the
loco of their endless drifting shadows, but for a minute up there I
had an infernal sick feeling. It's a new one on me, and there was
nothing I could blame it on but disgust of the buzzards."

"You're goin' too shy on the water, and never knew before that you had
nerves," stated Pike sagely. "I've been there; fought with a pardner
once,--Jimmy Dean, till he had to rope me. You take a pull at the
water bottle, and take it now."

Kit did so, but shook his head.

"It touches the right spot, but it was not a thirst fancy. It was
another thought and--O Bells of Pluto! Pike, let's talk of something
else! What was that you said about the Sinaloa priest story of the red
gold? You said something about a new slant on the old dope."

"Uh-huh!" grunted Pike. "At least it was a new slant to me. I've heard
over and over about uprising of Indians, and death of the two priests
who found their mine, but this Sinaloa legend has it that the Indians
did not kill the priests, but that their gods did!"

"Their gods?"

"Yeh, the special gods of that region rose up and smote them. That's
why the Indians barred out other mission priests for so long a spell
that no white man remembered just where the lost shrine of the red
gold was. Of course it's all p