since you are on the Sonora end of the ranch, and
since you are picking up your ears to learn Sonoran trails, it might
be a good time to follow your luck. Say, I'll bet that every herder
who drifts into the _cantina_ at La Partida has heard of the red gold
of El Alisal. The Yaquis used to know where it was before so many of
them were killed off; reckon it's lost good and plenty now, but
nothing is hid forever and it's waiting there for some man with the
luck."

"We're willing," grinned Kit. "You are a great little old dreamer,
Captain. And there is a fair chance I may range down there. I met a
chap named Whitely from over toward the Painted Hills north of Altar.
Ranch manager, sort of friendly."

"Sure, Tom Whitely has some stock in a ranch over there--the Mesa
Blanca ranch--it joins Soledad on the west. I've always aimed to range
that way, but the lost mine is closer than the eastern sierras--must
be! The trail of the early padres was farther east, and the mine could
not well be far from the trail, not more than a day's journey by mule
or burro, and that's about twenty miles. You see Bub, it was found by
a padre who wandered off the trail on the way to a little branch
mission, or _visita_, as they call it, and it was where trees grew,
for a big alisal tree--sycamore you know--was near the outcrop of that
red gold. Well, that _visita_ was where the padres only visited the
heathen for baptism and such things; no church was built there! That's
what tangles the trail for anyone trying to find traces after a
hundred years."

"I reckon it would," agreed Rhodes. "Think what a hundred years of
cactus, sand, and occasional _temblors_ can do to a desert, to say
nothing of the playful zephyrs. Why, Cap, the winds could lift a
good-sized range of hills and fill the baby rivers with it in that
time, for the winds of the desert have a way with them!"

A boy rode out of the whirls of dust, and climbed up on the corral
fence where Rhodes was finishing tally of the horses selected for
shipment. He was the slender, handsome son of Tomas Herrara of whom
they had been speaking.

"It is a letter," he said, taking a folded paper from his hat. "The
Senor Conrad is having the telegraph, and the cars are to be ready for
Granados."

"Right you are, Juanito," agreed Rhodes. "Tell Senor Conrad I will
reach Granados for supper, and that all the stock is in."

The lad whirled away again, riding joyously north, and Rhodes, after
giving fi