“I’d like fer to see the scrap,” he said slowly.  “They tell me Westcott ain’t so slow on the draw—­but Bill will get him!”

The sun rose a red ball of fire, colouring the ridges of sand, and painting the grotesque rocks with crimson streamers.  As it ascended higher into the pale blue of the sky the heat-waves began to sweep across the sandy waste.  In the shadow of a bald cliff the wagon was halted briefly, and the two men brought forth materials from within, making a hasty fire, and preparing breakfast.  Water was given the team also, before the journey was resumed; while during the brief halt the girl was left to do as she pleased.  Then they moved on again, surrounded by the same drear landscape, the very depression of it keeping them silent.  Sikes nodded sleepily, his head against a wagon bow.  Once Moore roused up, pointing into the distance with one hand.

“What do yer make o’ that out thar?” he asked sharply. “’Tain’t a human, is it?”

Sikes straightened up with a start, and stared blankly in the direction indicated.  Apparently he could perceive nothing clearly, for he reached back into the wagon-box, and drew forth a battered field-glass, quickly adjusting it to his eyes.  Stella’s keener vision made out a black, indistinct figure moving against the yellow background of a far away sand-ridge, and she stood up, clinging to Moore’s seat, to gain a better view.  Sikes got the object in focus.

“Nothin’ doing,” he announced.  “It’s travellin’ on four legs—­a b’ar, likely, although I never afore heard of a b’ar being in yere.”

They settled down to the same monotony, mile after mile.  The way became rockier with less sand, but with no more evidence of life.  A high cliff rose menacingly to their right, bare of the slightest trace of vegetation, while in the opposite direction the plain assumed a dead level, mirages appearing occasionally in the far distance.  Far away ahead a strange buttress of rock rose into the sky resembling the turret of a huge castle.  The sun was directly overhead when Moore turned his team suddenly to the left, and drove down a sharp declivity leading into a ravine.

“Drop the canvas, Joe,” he said shortly, “there’s only ’bout a mile more.”

CHAPTER XVIII:  IN MEXICAN POWER

The passage was so narrow, and so diversified by sharp turns, that Miss Donovan, shut in behind the closed cover, could perceive little of its nature.  Apparently the ravine was a mere gash in the surface of the desert plain, to be originally discovered purely through accident.  One might pass a hundred yards to either side, and never realise its existence, the hard rock, covered by a thin layer of sand, retaining no trace of wheel-marks in guidance.  How Moore had ever driven so unerringly to the spot was a mystery.  Yet he had done so, and now the team was slowly creeping down the narrow ledge utilised as a road, the slipping wheels securely locked, as they drifted here and there about the sharp corners, ever descending into the unknown depths.