Gale devined that somewhere along this crater of hell the Yaqui would make his final stand; and one look into his strange, inscrutable eyes made imagination picture a fitting doom for the pursuing Rojas.

XII

THE CRATER OF HELL

The trail led along a gigantic fissure in the side of the crater, and then down and down into a red-walled, blue hazed labyrinth.

Presently Gale, upon turning a sharp corner, was utterly amazed to see that the split in the lava sloped out and widened into an arroyo.  It was so green and soft and beautiful in all the angry, contorted red surrounding that Gale could scarcely credit his sight.  Blanco Sol whistled his welcome to the scent of water.  Then Gale saw a great hole, a pit in the shiny lava, a dark, cool, shady well.  There was evidence of the fact that at flood seasons the water had an outlet into the arroyo.  The soil appeared to be a fine sand, in which a reddish tinge predominated; and it was abundantly covered with a long grass, still partly green.  Mesquites and palo verdes dotted the arroyo and gradually closed in thickets that obstructed the view.

“Shore it all beats me,” exclaimed Ladd.  “What a place to hole-up in!  We could have hid here for a long time.  Boys, I saw mountain sheep, the real old genuine Rocky Mountain bighorn.  What do you think of that?”

“I reckon it’s a Yaqui hunting-ground,” replied Lash.  “That trail we hit must be hundreds of years old.  It’s worn deep and smooth in iron lava.”

“Well, all I got to say is—­Beldin’ was shore right about the Indian.  An’ I can see Rojas’s finish somewhere up along that awful hell-hole.”

Camp was made on a level spot.  Yaqui took the horses to water, and then turned them loose in the arroyo.  It was a tired and somber group that sat down to eat.  The strain of suspense equaled the wearing effects of the long ride.  Mercedes was calm, but her great dark eyes burned in her white face.  Yaqui watched her.  The others looked at her with unspoken pride.  Presently Thorne wrapped her in his blankets, and she seemed to fall asleep at once.  Twilight deepened.  The campfire blazed brighter.  A cool wind played with Mercedes’s black hair, waving strands across her brow.

Little of Yaqui’s purpose or plan could be elicited from him.  But the look of him was enough to satisfy even Thorne.  He leaned against a pile of wood, which he had collected, and his gloomy gaze pierced the campfire, and at long intervals strayed over the motionless form of the Spanish girl.

The rangers and Thorne, however, talked in low tones.  It was absolutely impossible for Rojas and his men to reach the waterhole before noon of the next day.  And long before that time the fugitives would have decided on a plan of defense.  What that defense would be, and where it would be made, were matters over which the men considered gravely.  Ladd averred the Yaqui would put them into an impregnable position, that at the same time would prove a death-trap for their pursuers.  They exhausted every possibility, and then, tired as they were, still kept on talking.