Sweeny immediately shinned up the stepped beam, uttered a neigh of triumphant laughter from the top, and then skylarked down again.

“Well, you are a man,” observed the strong-minded lady, somewhat discomfited.  “Av coorse I’m a man,” yelped Sweeny.  “Who said I wasn’t?  He’s a lying informer.  Ha ha, hoo hoo, ho ho!”

Thus incited, pulled at moreover from above and boosted from below, Aunt Maria mounted ladder after ladder until she stood on the roof of the Casa Grande.

“If I ever go down again, I shall have to drop,” she gasped.  “I never expected when I came on this journey to be a sailor and climb maintops.”

“Lieutenant Thurstane is waving his hand to us,” said Clara, with a smile like sunlight.

“Let him wave,” returned Mrs. Stanley, weary, disconsolate, and out of patience with everything.  “I must say it’s a poor place to be waving hands.”

Meantime Thurstane had beckoned a couple of muleteers to follow him, and set off to beat the enclosure for a spring, or for a spot where it would be possible to sink a well with good result.  Although the search seemed absurd on such an isolated hill, he had some hopes; for in the first place, the old inhabitants must have had a large supply of water, and they could not have brought it up a steep slope of two hundred feet without great difficulty; in the second place, the butte was of limestone, and in a limestone region water makes for itself strange reservoirs and outlets.

His trust was well-grounded.  In a sharply indented hollow, twenty feet below the general surface of the enclosure, and not more than thirty yards from the Casa Grande, he found a copious spring.  About it were traces of stone work, forming a sort of ruinous semicircle, as though a well had been dug, the neighboring earth scooped out, and the sides of the opening fenced up with masonry.  By the way, he was not the first to discover the treasure, for the acute senses of the mules had been beforehand with him, and a number of them were already there drinking.

Calling Meyer, he said, “Sergeant, get a fatigue party to work here.  I want a transverse trench cut below the spring for the animals, and a guard at the spring itself to keep it clear for the people.”

Next he hurried away to the spot where he had posted Kelly to watch the Apaches.

Climbing the wall, he looked about for the Apaches, and discovered them about half a mile distant, bivouacked on the bank of the rivulet.

“They have been reinforced, sir,” said Kelly.  “Stragglers are coming up every few minutes.”

“So I perceive.  Have you seen anything of the girl Pepita?”

“There’s a figure there, sir, against that sapling, that hasn’t moved for half an hour.  I’ve an idea it’s the girl, sir, tied to the sapling.”

Thurstane adjusted his glass, took a long steady look, and said sombrely, “It’s the girl.  Keep an eye on her.  If they start to do anything with her, let me know.  Signal with your cap.”