Sid wished that his father could be here to counsel him. He had almost a conviction that he was really that officer who had saved Honanta’s life in Apache Cave so long ago. It would be just like him. That deed would give his father vast influence over the chief, and some way out of this tangle of perplexities would be found by the good old Colonel. Sid wished now that he had sent Hano direct to bring his father. The Colvin ranch was up in the Gila Cañon on the railroad not a hundred miles away. The name was already well known in Arizona, their station near the ranch being named “Colvin’s” on the main line. Hano could have reached the rails by a fast push out to Tacna, and then have taken the train to Colvin’s. That would bring the Colonel here in two days at most, for there was a railroad to Ajo Mines only fifty miles away from Pinacate. But it was too late now. After-thought is mere aggravation! What would Hano really do, now that he was free? Sid asked himself. He confessed he didn’t know. We know nothing of the Indian mind and its workings. We really know nothing of the race nor where they came from. Not Semitic, surely, for, Phœnician Jew or Arab, the accumulation of vast stores of wealth is the dominant Semitic trait, and the Indian scorns wealth and miserliness alike. Sid was convinced that they are of the same Aryan stock as ourselves. If so, his theory was that they must have migrated east from Asia at a far earlier period than our own ancestors’ westward migration, for we still have the Aryan word roots, while in America there are no less than three great Indian languages--Algonquin, Athapascan, Siouan--totally different, the peoples also as different in physical and moral characteristics as are our own Teutonic and Latin branches of the same Aryan stock. We developed individualism as we migrated westward. The Indian developed it, too, in this great new land, but he retained one distinctive Asiatic trait--the impersonal ego--the sinking of self in the clan whose interests are always paramount to everything else. Reasoning from that, Sid tried to conjecture what Hano’s motives would be. To keep _all_ these whites, Mexicans and his own friends alike, away from Red Mesa, the home of his clan; to kill Ruler, the tracking dog, so that Sid could not be traced here, seemed to Sid what Hano would really do. He would act on that basis, Sid was sure. His own chance of rescue, then, was really very slight. His life was safe for twenty-four hours, no matter what the old men might decide in council. After that his fate really depended solely on the identity of his name with that Colvin of Apache Cave! But how to prove to Honanta that that man was Colonel Colvin himself? To claim it without proof would be taken by the Indians as a mere forlorn hope to save his own life. Hano could have brought that proof for him, given time enough; now it was too late. Sid gave it all up; there was really nothing to do but wait events.