And then they entered those baffling dunes, carrying enough game and water to last for that day and the next, and Steven became one with the desert in another of its forms. Again and again Juan would climb to the summit of the highest foothill to locate some blue peak, and would descend to thread those deceptive winding ways at their feet. Miraculously, it seemed to Steven, they emerged from the dunes at the end of the second day just as Juan had said they would, and thereafter they bore eastward, directing their footsteps toward a pass in the nearer range, which, because of the height of the dunes, could not be seen at all before. Here they came upon a tiny village of Pueblo Indians, nestling beside a clear stream upon the sloping side of the mountain. Juan found that he could speak their tongue; they were of Queres stock, as was his pueblo. They made inquiries for Bragdon and Doren, but the Indians said that the two had not passed that way. The Pueblos were a friendly, farming people and there was no reason to doubt that they were speaking the truth. For a small bar of pure silver Steven and Juan took their fill of the best of corn cakes, of savory kid stew cooked with little wild onions and green beans of native raising, and rode away upon two frisky mares, saddled and bridled with rope and blanket only, it is true, but worth ten bars of silver to Steven’s blistered feet. Over the mountain passes they rode, through a pretty winding canyon filled with flowers and small pine, and came out upon a wide flat plain, across which they cantered as upon a level table. Gleaming sand and hard yellow clay gave back like castanets the sound of their mares’ unshod hooves. And as they trotted ahead the mountains rose before them, up and up from the mesa till they towered even above the foothills that came rippling graciously down to the plain. They slept on the desert and went on at dawn. The tents of the Apaches clustered thick upon the grassy slopes of the mountain-side. The chiefs of the Apaches welcomed them with tobacco and with the white meat of fish that a short time before had been leaping in the sunlight from the crystal-clear streams of Mescalero. With signs, and with his few words of Apache, Juan of Santo Domingo made clear the purpose for which they had come. To find a white man and child. An Apache chieftain who came forward to listen nodded and, speaking and gesticulating rapidly, gave Juan to understand that a white man and a boy child had passed that way, had lingered along their streams, shaking the basin which yields gold and silver, and had departed but yesterday.