to be their fortress; in it and around it they
must fight for life against the Apaches; here, where a nameless people had
perished, they must conquer or perish also. Thurstane posted Kelly and one
of the Mexicans on the exterior wall to watch the movements of the savage
horde in the plain below. Then he followed the others to the deserted
citadel.

Two doorways, one on each of the faces which looked into the enclosure,
offered ingress. They were similar in size and shape, seven feet and a
half in height by four in breadth, and tapering toward the summit like the
portals of the temple-builders of Central America. Inside were solid mud
floors, strewn with gray dust and showing here and there a gleam of broken
pottery, the whole brooded over by obscurity. It was discoverable,
however, that the room within was of considerable height and size.

There was a hesitation about entering. It seemed as if the ghosts of the
nameless people forbade it. This had been the abode of men who perhaps
inhabited America before the coming of Columbus. Here possibly the
ancestors of Montezuma had stayed their migrations from the mounds of the
Ohio to the pyramids of Cholula and Tenochtitlan. Or here had lived the
Moquis, or the Zunians, or the Lagunas, before they sought refuge from the
red tribes of the north upon the buttes south of the Sierra del Carrizo.
Here at all events had once palpitated a civilization which was now a
ghost.

"This is to be our home for a little while," said Thurstane to Clara.
"Will you dismount? I will run in and turn out the snakes, if there are
any. Sergeant, keep your men and a few others ready to repel an attack.
Now, fellows, off with the packs."

Producing a couple of wax tapers, he lighted them, handed one to Coronado,
and led the way into the silent Casa de Montezuma. They were in a hall
about ten feet high, fifteen feet broad, and forty feet long, which
evidently ran across the whole front of the building. The walls were
hard-finished and adorned with etchings in vermilion of animals,
geometrical figures, and nondescript grotesques, all of the rudest design
and disposed without regard to order. A doorway led into a small central
room, and from that doorways opened into three more rooms, one on each
side.

The ceilings of all the rooms were supported by unhewn beams, five or six
inches thick, deeply inserted into the adobe walls. In the ceiling of the
rearmost hall (the one which had no direct outlet up