“C’rect--nawthin’ a-tall, li’l hombre!” grinned Big John sardonically. “No water; no feed for yore burros; no road--an’ no _mine_!” he declared. “Yes, but ships, John!” urged Scotty. “That’s different. We can send out a year’s supply of hay, oats and supplies for the camp just as they do at Las Pintas, and bring back the bottoms in ore. It’s mighty different from some inland proposition, hundreds of miles from either rail or sea routes. If this tablet is reliable, the engineering side of it is a cinch! Le’s hear the ethnologist.” Sid spoke up on this prompting: “We know well that all that country has been explored since the earliest times by the Spaniards,” he contributed. “Sonoyta has been inhabited by them for over two hundred years, and one of their oldest missions is San Xavier, the one for Papago Indians who used to hunt all that country. The friars were Dominicans--D.O.M., you see. This Fra Pedro undoubtedly got his information from some Papago visitors to the pueblo tribes. He made that pottery record and had it fired while proselyting among the pueblos of the San Pedro River--probably named the river himself after his patron saint. It all fits in, see, John? Then he got wounded or hurt, somehow, in the general massacre of the friars in 1680 and died in the refuge of that cavate dwelling. The Indians buried his plaque with him in a sort of kiva. The thing seems straight enough to me,” concluded Sid. “Me too!” grinned Big John. “I gotto nurse you two pisen mean young reptyles down into that no-man’s land--I see _that_!” he snorted. “Waal, le’s git back to yore camp, Scotty, an’ I’ll git the outfit ready. Niltci’s goin’, of course. We gotto hev at least _one_ Injun down in that country. Thar’s lots of mountain sheep down thar, an’ that means hoss feed, galleta grass. We’ll git a few pronghorns (antelope), mebbe, out’n them lava craters. Ef the tanks is not dry, we kin resk it.” CHAPTER III VASQUEZ Leaving Big John and Niltci hard at work making pemmican from the cougar and deer meat, and bags of pinole or parched corn meal from corn purchased at a near-by Apache encampment, Sid and Scotty rode a day’s march through the mountains to where there was a mission school--San Mateo of the Apaches. Scotty’s idea was to get the Red Mesa tablet translated by the teacher, who no doubt still remembered his Latin. A small adobe schoolhouse of primitive Spanish architecture came in sight shortly after noon, surmounting a little knoll in the mountains. As they rode toward it Indian children, boys and girls, came running and yelling around them to beg pennies, and with them as an escort they rode up to the hitching rail before the school, dismounted and entered.