“Them thar rails says we gotta lope along pronto, boys!” said Big John as he pushed the white mustang to the head of the column. “Yore schoolmarm friend has gone by hyar, in the cyars, shore’s yore a foot high. ’Cause why? I didn’t see no pony tracks headin’ down fer Tucson, nohow, comin’ down this valley.” “Think he’s gone to Nogales, by train, John?” asked Scotty anxiously. “Shore has! Or else he’s takin’ the jerkwater local out of Tucson to San Xavier, so he can reach the Papago Reservation ahead of us. We’ll be crossin’ thet Injun ole folks’ home soon as we git out’n these hills an’ we’ll shore hev trouble!” Big John shook his head ominously and urged on the white mustang. For him the race for Red Mesa had already begun. “Yes, but the Papagoes are harmless,” objected Scotty. “Not this time of year!” put in Sid. “This is corn time with them, and every other buck is drunk on a ferment that they make of it. That Vasquez could arouse them to almost anything, now.--Hey, John?” “Shore, them Injuns is bad medicine for all white men in November!” quoth Big John sententiously. They rode on in silence. A row ahead was tolerably certain, Sid thought. If Vasquez had reached them first by the railroad they would probably get a hot reception! Two hours later their cavalcade filed out of the mountains and headed across a wide and hot plain. It was like riding into an entirely new world. Odd twisted and contorted cactus vegetation now covered the desert. Every plant and tree was different from anything the boys had ever seen before. Even the mountains were different, for instead of having the usual foothills they rose, gray and jagged and bare in the blue sky, abruptly from a flat and sandy floor. A faint tinge of green on their sides showed that the queer vegetation of this arboreal desert climbed up for a considerable distance even on that dry and inhospitable soil. In front of them stretched a wide and flat plain, clear to the bases of the distant gray mountains. Sparse galleta grass and patches of gray sand dotted with creosote bushes covered it. There were clumps of mesquite, looking like dwarfed and twisted locust trees; here and there a bright green patch which, on riding closer, developed on to a _palo verde_, its bright green branches and twigs a dense lacery of glistening green. Sid rose close to one, looking for its leaves for apparently it had none. They were infinitesimal, spiky little things, adding nothing to its beauty, which he saw came entirely from the _palo verde’s_ masses of sap-green branches. As they rode further to the southwest, multitudes of what looked like tall green fence posts appeared. They covered the ridges, each as straight as a lance and as thick as a tree. They were small saguarro or giant cactus, ribbed and pleated in green, and covered with thorns. Further west they grew larger and put forth branches like huge candelabra.