No antelope were in sight, however. Even if so, they would be quite invisible under that burning sun. The horses loped on. Gradually there rose out of the desert a low hill, sheered off flat at its summit and covered with the dense lacery of creosote bushes. Cerro Colorado it was, and they picketed the animals out and began to climb its rocky slopes. Rough, sharp lava, in boulders of all sizes, marked the lava flow of geologic times from this hill; indeed the whole plain below was made entirely of the outpourings of this one crater. Once on its top they looked out over the country between them and Pinacate, who loomed up grim and imposing in the west and surrounded by his wide and desolate lava fields. Twenty dreary miles away was he! Sid had carried with him the Red Mesa plaque, bearing its enigmatical message in Latin which Fate had not permitted them yet to have translated and he now produced it for that last reading. The words they knew were still there, staring up at them from its red pottery surface. “_XXI Milia S-O ab Pinacate--Minem aurum et argentum--In Mesam Rubram_”--there was no mistaking _that_! But the more they pored over the words the more unbelievable they became! It was surely a cruel joke, a wild tale that the Papagoes had brought to that old priest, Fra Pedro. It must be--_now_! For, below them stretched a vast plain, stippled all over with creosote bushes, clear to the base of Pinacate itself, twenty miles away! There _was_ no Red Mesa, no hill of any sort on that plain! If those bearings on the plaque were true, Red Mesa ought to be in plain sight, right now, and not over five miles away! But there was nothing of the kind, anywhere in sight! Scotty finally turned to look at Sid, silent misery in his eyes. His dream had vanished. Already his thoughts were turning to the future. His next letter to his mother would _not_ be the triumphant announcement of a valuable claim staked out, a triumphant return east to organize a company, but--well, nothing much; nothing but perhaps a brief note, saying that he had got a job somewhere. Sid gripped his hand sympathetically. There was nothing to say. If Red Mesa existed it certainly was not here. “Cheer up, old top; le’s forget it and go hunting!” he grinned. But Scotty’s tenacious persistence now came to his rescue. He turned to Big John. “There’s a mine around Pinacate _somewhere_, John, sure as we stand here!” he gritted. “I doubt if the Papagoes of that day knew how to tell that friar east or west in Spanish very clearly. And a mine wouldn’t be found in this lava but in granite outcroppings if I know anything about mining. I’m game to stay here and look for it, boys, while you’re hunting sheep.” “Yaas, you pore lamb!” said Big John soothingly. “I’ll tell ye: Them Hornaday mountains _is_ granite. An’ they’re twenty miles north_west_ of Pinacate! Put that in yore face an’ chaw it, if it’s any comfort to ye.” CHAPTER V RED MESA