on the enclosure) was
a trapdoor which offered the only access to the stories above. A rude but
solid ladder, consisting of two beams with steps chopped into them, was
still standing here. With a vague sense of intrusion, half expecting that
the old inhabitants would appear and order them away, Thurstane and
Coronado ascended. The second story resembled the first, and above was
another of the same pattern. Then came a nearly flat roof; and here they
found something remarkable. It was a solid sheathing or tiling, made of
slates of baked and glazed pottery, laid with great exactness, admirably
cemented and projecting well over the eaves. This it was which had enabled
the adobes beneath to endure for years, and perhaps for centuries, in
spite of the lapping of rains and the gnawing of winds.

On the outermost corner of the structure, overlooking the eddying, foaming
bend of the San Juan, rose the isolated tower. It contained a single room,
walled with hard-finish and profusely etched with figures in vermilion. No
furniture anywhere, nor utensils, nor relics, excepting bits of pottery,
precisely such as is made now by the Moquis, various in color, red, white,
grayish, and black, much of it painted inside as well as out, and all
adorned with diamond patterns and other geometrical outlines.

"I have seen Casas Grandes in other places," said Coronado, "but nothing
like this. This is the only one that I ever found entire. The others are
in ruins, the roofs fallen in, the beams charred, etc."

"This was not taken," decided the Lieutenant, after a tactical meditation.
"This must have been abandoned by its inhabitants. Pestilence, or
starvation, or migration."

"We can beat off all the Apaches in New Mexico," observed Coronado, with
something like cheerfulness.

"We can whip everything but our own stomachs," replied Thurstane.

"We have as much food as those devils."

"But water?" suggested the forethoughted West Pointer.

It was a horrible doubt, for if there was no water in the enclosure, they
were doomed to speedy and cruel death, unless they could beat the Indians
in the field and drive them away from the rivulet.

CHAPTER XX.

When Thurstane came out of the Casa Grande he would have given some years
of his life to know that there was water in the enclosure.

Yet so well disciplined was the soul of this veteran of twenty-three, and
so thoroughly had he acquired the wise soldierly habit of wearing a mask
of