Moreover, Belding had other worry and strain.  April arrived with no news of the rangers.  From Casita came vague reports of raiders in the Sonoyta country—­reports impossible to verify until his Mexican rangers returned.  When these men rode in, one of them, Gonzales, an intelligent and reliable halfbreed, said he had met prospectors at the oasis.  They had just come in on the Camino del Diablo, reported a terrible trip of heat and drought, and not a trace of the Yaqui’s party.

“That settles it,” declared Belding.  “Yaqui never went to Sonoyta.  He’s circled round to the Devil’s Road, and the rangers, Mercedes, Thorne, the horses—­they—­I’m afraid they have been lost in the desert.  It’s an old story on Camino del Diablo.”

He had to tell Nell that, and it was an ordeal which left him weak.

Mrs. Belding listened to him, and was silent for a long time while she held the stricken Nell to her breast.  Then she opposed his convictions with that quiet strength so characteristic of her arguments.

“Well, then,” decided Belding, “Rojas headed the rangers at Papago Well or the Tanks.”

“Tom, when you are down in the mouth you use poor judgment,” she went on.  “You know only by a miracle could Rojas or anybody have headed those white horses.  Where’s your old stubborn confidence?  Yaqui was up on Diablo.  Dick was up on Sol.  And there were the other horses.  They could not have been headed or caught.  Miracles don’t happen.”

“All right, mother, it’s sure good to hear you,” said Belding.  She always cheered him, and now he grasped at straws.  “I’m not myself these days, don’t mistake that.  Tell us what you think.  You always say you feel things when you really don’t know them.”

“I can say little more than what you said yourself the night Mercedes was taken away.  You told Laddy to trust Yaqui, that he was a godsend.  He might go south into some wild Sonora valley.  He might lead Rojas into a trap.  He would find water and grass where no Mexican or American could.”

“But mother, they’re gone seven weeks.  Seven weeks!  At the most I gave them six weeks.  Seven weeks in the desert!”

“How do the Yaquis live?” she asked.

Belding could not reply to that, but hope revived in him.  He had faith in his wife, though he could not in the least understand what he imagined was something mystic in her.

“Years ago when I was searching for my father I learned many things about this country,” said Mrs. Belding.  “You can never tell how long a man may live in the desert.  The fiercest, most terrible and inaccessible places often have their hidden oasis.  In his later years my father became a prospector.  That was strange to me, for he never cared for gold or money.  I learned that he was often gone in the desert for weeks, once for months.  Then the time came when he never came back.  That was years before I reached the southwest