----"

"But it happened to every Indian on the boat, and the boat was full!
No one knows how the poor devils decided it, but it was their only
escape from slavery, and they went over the side like a school of
fish. Men, women, and children from the desert who couldn't swim a
stroke! Talk about nerve--there wasn't one weakling in that whole
outfit, not one! Perez was wild. It lost him sixty dollars a head,
American."

"And that's the neighbor friend Conrad takes a run down south to see
occasionally?"

"Who says so, Bub?"

The two looked at each other, eyes questioning.

"Look here, son," said Pike, after a little, "I'll hit any trail with
you barring Mexican politics. They all sell each other out as regular
as the seasons swing around, and the man north of the line who gets
tangled is sure to be victim if he stays in long enough."

"Oh, I don't know! We have a statesman or two who flirted with Sonora
and came out ahead."

"I said if he stayed in," reminded Pike. "Sure we have crooks galore
who drift across, play a cut-throat game and skip back to cover. The
border is lined with them on both sides. And Conrad----"

"But Conrad isn't in politics."

"N-no. There's no evidence that he is, but his Mexican friends are.
There are men on the Granados now who used to be down on Soledad, and
they are the men who make the trips with him to the lower ranch."

"Tomas Herrara and Chico Domingo?"

"I reckon you've sized them up, but remember, Kit, I don't cross over
with you for any political game, and I don't know a thing!"

"All right, Captain, but don't raise too loud a howl if I fancy a
_pasear_ occasionally to improve my Spanish."

The old man grumbled direful and profane prophecies as to things
likely to happen to students of Spanish love songs in Sonora, and then
sat with his head on one side studying Kit ruminatively as he made his
notes of the selected stock.

"Ye know Bub, it mightn't be so bad at that, if you called a halt in
time, for one of the lost mine trails calls for Spanish and plenty of
it. I've got a working knowledge, but the farther you travel into
Sonora the less American you will hear, and that lost mine of the old
padres is down there along the ranges of Soledad somewhere."

"Which one of the fifty-seven varieties have you elected to uncover
first?" queried Rhodes. "The last time you were confidential about
mines I thought the 'Three Hills of Gold' were mentioned by you."

"Sure it was, but