Gale saw him stop and gaze out over that red-ribbed
void to the Gulf.
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.
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