“It has been as well hidden from those who sought it as if it were under the buried ruins of the mission,” she said; then simply: “While El Doctor is gone it is best that we get some sleep.” Benicia stretched herself under the shade of a rock with a saddle blanket for pillow and slept. But neither of the white men could follow her precept; both were too sensible of the prickling of some unnameable essence of the strange and the unworldly--perhaps that very savagery of atmosphere which had prompted primitive Indians to designate Pinacate as the residence of their god. They were alone; big Quelele had quietly slipped away shortly after El Doctor without saying where he was going. The men sat smoking while their eyes roved the prospect of burnt cliff and ragged parapet. The heat had whips; it drove them to burrow for lessening shade wherever angles of the rocks offered. A curious cast to the slice of sky visible above the cañon walls first caught Bagley’s attention. He squinted up at it for a long moment of speculation. “If it wasn’t so early in the summer I’d say a thunderhead was fixin’ up to give us a big razoo,” he ventured. Grant looked up and noted that the blue had turned to a heavy saffron tint as if the sun were shining through a stratum of light sand; such a tint he’d seen before the great windstorm on the day of Don Padraic’s burial. “If I could only look over the top of the wall yonder to west’ard,” Bim grumbled uneasily. “These cloudbursts always come from direction of the Gulf. We’re not very well put right here in the channel of all the wash down from up top-side. Those horses now--” He walked uneasily about the narrow confines of the shelf, scanning the upshoots of rock for possible ways out. Then he seemed to dismiss possibility of trouble from his mind and returned to where Grant was sitting. An hour passed. Perhaps they were dozing when the rattle of a shower of rock down the cañon side galvanized both. Up there they saw the figure of big Quelele. Like a wild goat he was leaping from foothold to foothold downward; he was in mad haste. The big Indian risked his neck a dozen times before he came panting up to the watchers. He waved to the brink of the cliff. “I been on top--watching--I see long way off--Urgo--rurales. They come--fast!” CHAPTER XXIV STORM Bim translated Quelele’s intelligence for Grant. “Our li’l friend Urgo’s been burnin’ the wind,” was his dry comment. Grant sent a quick glance around the cul-de-sac of rock which encompassed them. “Not the best place in the world to stand off ten men,” he gave his opinion. “We ought to get our backs up against something that can’t be surrounded.”