“Lemme that glass,” suddenly said Jim Lash.  “I’m seein’ red, I tell you....Well, pore as my eyes are they had it right.  Rojas an’ his outfit have left the trail.”

“Jim, you ain’t meanin’ they’ve taken to that awful slope?” queried Ladd.

“I sure do.  There they are—­still comin’, but goin’ down, too.”

“Mebbe Rojas is crazy, but it begins to look like he—­”

“Laddy, I’ll be danged if the Greaser bunch hasn’t vamoosed.  Gone out of sight!  Right there not a half mile away, the whole caboodle—­gone!”

“Shore they’re behind a crust or have gone down into a rut,” suggested Ladd.  “They’ll show again in a minute.  Look sharp, boys, for I’m figgerin’ Rojas ’ll spread his men.”

Minutes passed, but nothing moved upon the slope.  Each man crawled up to a vantage point along the crest of rotting lava.  The watchers were careful to peer through little notches or from behind a spur, and the constricted nature of their hiding-place kept them close together.  Ladd’s muttering grew into a growl, then lapsed into the silence that marked his companions.  From time to time the rangers looked inquiringly at Gale.  The field glass, however, like the naked sight, could not catch the slightest moving object out there upon the lava.  A long hour of slow, mounting suspense wore on.

“Shore it’s all goin’ to be as queer as the Yaqui,” said Ladd.

Indeed, the strange mien, the silent action, the somber character of the Indian had not been without effect upon the minds of the men.  Then the weird, desolate, tragic scene added to the vague sense of mystery.  And now the disappearance of Rojas’s band, the long wait in the silence, the boding certainty of invisible foes crawling, circling closer and closer, lent to the situation a final touch that made it unreal.

“I’m reckonin’ there’s a mind behind them Greasers,” replied Jim.  “Or mebbe we ain’t done Rojas credit...If somethin’ would only come off!”

That Lash, the coolest, most provokingly nonchalant of men in times of peril, should begin to show a nervous strain was all the more indicative of a suble pervading unreality.

“Boys, look sharp!” suddenly called Lash.  “Low down to the left —­mebbe three hundred yards.  See, along by them seams of lava —­behind the choyas.  First off I thought it was a sheep.  But it’s the Yaqui!...Crawlin’ swift as a lizard!  Can’t you see him?”

It was a full moment before Jim’s companions could locate the Indian.  Flat as a snake Yaqui wound himself along with incredible rapidity.  His advance was all the more remarkable for the fact that he appeared to pass directly under the dreaded choyas.  Sometimes he paused to lift his head and look.  He was directly in line with a huge whorl of lava that rose higher than any point on the slope.  This spur was a quarter of a mile from the position of the rangers.

“Shore he’s headin’ for that high place,” said Ladd.  “He’s goin’ slow now.  There, he’s stopped behind some choyas.  He’s gettin’ up—­no, he’s kneelin’....Now what the hell!”