“D.O.M.--Deo Optimo Maximo,” he rolled out in the sonorous Latin tongue. That was as far as he got in reading it out aloud to the boys. For, immediately thereafter, an expression of amazed, puzzled surprise came into his eyes as the boys watched him reading over the script to himself. Then Sid noted intense concentration, and this gradually gave way to an expression of crafty cupidity, an air of envisioning something other than the words that his eyes were falling on, of planning big enterprise, great affairs in connection with this tablet. Vasquez went on to read the script entirely through in a still, tense silence. Before he had finished, those snaky black eyes of his were fairly blazing with avarice. Talk of the power of the word “gold” to excite man! This man’s primitive nature stood stripped before the boys; revealed was an elemental desire for possession before which the rights of others, the entire veneer of civilization were stricken off as phantoms. He might as well have been some Mexican greaser griping at a pile of gold on some disreputable faro table along the border! As Sid watched, the face before him looked up. Instantly it went blank, expressionless. There was a period of reflection, while the boys waited expectantly, then a crafty, planning look came into the eyes. He folded the plaque under his arm--gesture of possession, which we are told, is nine points of the law. Vasquez smiled--a practical declaration of ownership--a maddening, infuriating smile; the superior smile of the older man toward youth, which seems to question the right of the young man to busy himself with anything at all but the toys of childhood. Sid found it particularly unbearable. He had been smiled at that way before, when some staid and sophisticated professor had smiled indulgently at him over some of his own theories in Indian ethnology, theories which Sid propounded with all the fire of his youthful enthusiasm and conviction. “Caballeros,” said the Mexican craftily, “this matter can have no possible interest to you, since it happens to refer to the work of the missionary brothers among the--ah, the Papagoes--” he hesitated, referring to the script as if to refresh his memory, his thought evidently being that the boys might have recognized that word in the Latin. “Over two hundred years ago this--ah, yes, missionary matter it is, my young friends--was written concerning our poor red brothers who lived down near Pinacate,” Vasquez smiled down at them suavely. Sid glanced at Scotty. The latter’s Scotch nature was so incensed over this bald smiling perversion of what even his limited knowledge of Latin had told him was the truth that he was utterly speechless. “_Minem Argenti_” indeed! That meant “silver mine” at any rate! Scotty’s faced blazed red, his eyes burned blue fire. As for Sid, he saw no use in prolonging this conversation further, for in craft the Mexican was more than his match. Boylike he preferred direct action.