Day dawned with the fugitives in the saddle. A picketed wall of
cactus hedged them in, yet the Yaqui made a tortuous path, that,
zigzag as it might, in the main always headed south. It was
wonderful how he slipped Diablo through the narrow aisles of thorns,
saving the horse and saving himself. The others were torn and
clutched and held and stung. The way was a flat, sandy pass between
low mountain ranges. There were open spots and aisles and squares
of sand; and hedging rows of prickly pear and the huge spider-legged
ocatillo and hummocky masses of clustered bisnagi. The day grew dry
and hot. A fragrant wind blew through the pass. Cactus flowers
bloomed, red and yellow and magenta. The sweet, pale Ajo lily
gleamed in shady corners.
Ten miles of travel covered the length of the pass. It opened wide
upon a wonderful scene, an arboreal desert, dominated by its pure
light green, yet lined by many merging colors. And it rose slowly
to a low dim and dark-red zone of lava, spurred, peaked, domed
by volcano cones, a wild and ragged region, illimitable as the
horizon.
The Yaqui, if not at fault, was yet uncertain. His falcon eyes
searched and roved, and became fixed at length at the southwest,
and toward this he turned his horse. The great, fluted saguaros,
fifty, sixty feet high, raised columnal forms, and their branching
limbs and curving lines added a grace to the desert. It was the
low-bushed cactus that made the toil and pain of travel.
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