This red lava seemed to have flowed
and hardened there only yesterday. It was broken sharp,
dull rust color, full of cracks and caves and crevices, and
everywhere upon its jagged surface grew the white-thorned choya.
Again twilight encompassed the travelers. But there was still
light enough for Gale to see the constricted passage open into a
wide, deep space where the dull color was relieved by the gray
of gnarled and dwarfed mesquite. Blanco Sol, keenest of scent,
whistled his welcome herald of water. The other horses answered,
quickened their gait. Gale smelled it, too, sweet, cool, damp on
the dry air.
Yaqui turned the corner of a pocket in the lava wall. The file
of white horses rounded the corner after him. And Gale, coming
last, saw the pale, glancing gleam of a pool of water beautiful in
the twilight.
Next day the Yaqui's relentless driving demand on the horses was
no longer in evidence. He lost no time, but he did not hasten. His
course wound between low cinder dunes which limited their view of
the surrounding country. These dunes finally sank down to a black
floor as hard as flint with tongues of lava to the left, and to the
right the slow descent into the cactus plain. Yaqui was now
traveling due west. It was Gale's idea that the Indian was skirting
the first sharp-toothed slope of a vast volcanic plateau which
formed the western half of the Sonora Desert and extended to the
Gulf of California. Travel was slow, but not exhausting for rider
or beast.
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