“That’s all right--the mountain won’t run away over night,” he bantered, slapping his hand down on Johnny Buffalo’s shoulder with an affectionate familiarity bred in the past month. “I’ve been juggling that car over the desert trails since sunrise, and I wouldn’t object to taking it easy for a few hours.” Johnny Buffalo said no more but began helping to unload the car. It was he who chose the trail by which they carried the loads to the upper level, cement-floored, where no tracks would show. He chose a hiding place beneath the wreckage of some machinery that had fallen against the bank in such a way that an open space was left beneath, large enough to hold their outfit. A huge rattlesnake protested stridently against being disturbed. Rawley drew his automatic, meaning to shoot it; but Johnny Buffalo stopped him with a warning gesture, and himself killed the snake with a rock. While it was still writhing with a smashed head, he picked it up by the tail, took a long step or two and heaved it into the river, grinning his satisfaction over a deed well done. Rawley, standing back watching him, had a swift vision of the old Indian paddling solemnly about the yard near the west wing. There he was an incongruous figure amongst the syringas and the roses. Here, although he had discarded the showy fringed buckskin for the orthodox brown khaki clothes of the desert, he somehow fitted into his surroundings and became a part of the wilderness itself. Johnny Buffalo was assuredly coming into his own. CHAPTER SIX TRAILS MEET By sunrise they were ready for the trail, light packs and filled canteens slung upon their shoulders. The car was backed against the bluff that would shade it from the scorching sunlight from early afternoon to sundown. Beside it were the embers of a mesquite-wood fire where they had boiled coffee and fried bacon in the cool of dawn. As a safeguard against the loss of his car, Rawley had disconnected the breaker points from the distributor and carried them, carefully wrapped, in his pocket. There would be no moving of the car under its own power until the points were replaced. And Johnny Buffalo had advised leaving a few things in the car, to ward off suspicion that their outfit had been cached. Furthermore, he had cunningly obliterated their tracks through the deep, fine sand to the ruins of the stamp mill. Even the keen, predatory eyes of an outlaw Indian could scarcely distinguish any trace of their many trips that way. They crossed the wash, turned into the remnant of an old road leading up the bank to the level above, and followed a trail up the river. Once Johnny Buffalo stopped and pointed down the bank. “The ferryboat went there,” he explained. “Much land has been eaten by the river since last I saw this place. Many houses stood here. They are gone. All is gone. My people are gone, like the town. Of Queo only have I heard, and him the white men hunt as they hunt the wolf.”