“Now we got to settle with Mister Vasquez!” exclaimed Big John grimly. “Thar’s still half a dozen of them with him, against the two of us up yonder.” But Niltci did not hear for he had crept up to a better position. He had seen nothing of Hano’s race as he was too hotly engaged with the Mexicans on the hillside. Big John peered out of his rocky lair, looking for “that ornery Vasquez.” A glimpse of him showed high among the rocks; then his rifle barked and the bullet spanged the rocks near by. The other Mexicans were now well concealed in the crags and the crack of their rifles and the whine and smash of Mausers about Big John’s position told him that the battle was on in dead earnest. For a time the fight remained stationary, both sides so well concealed that no quickness of sight could register a direct hit. Then a shot rang out, much nearer to the left. “Bad business, Niltci,” called out Big John, “they’re working down this way an’ hev got us cornered on this little knoll. We gotto do a sneak around this point and git above them somehow.” Niltci had already foreseen the danger, for he was now creeping snakelike through the rocks around the right flank of the knoll. Big John grunted whimsically as he followed after: “Gosh dern it, I ain’t even goin’ to _act_ civilized, pronto, if these hyar doin’s keeps up! I don’t like that party in the barber-pole poncho, none, an’ I’ll get careless and drill daylight through him ef I don’t watch myself!” he soliloquized. Then he came out on the right flank of the knoll, where all that vast interior angle of the mountain range burst at once into full view. For a moment he peered out and just stared! A huge black apron of lava fell out of the high lap of the mountains and spread far and wide down the slope until lost in the sands. But, dominating the gap where this lava flowed out, he saw two immense red walls, cast up like opening trap doors of granite. From his position the whole formation could be grasped in its entirety and its resemblance to a mesa struck Big John at once. “She looks jest like Thunder Mountain up near Zuñi to me,” he muttered wonderingly, “only she’s red. _Red Mesa_, by gum!” he exploded, as the conviction smote upon him. “An’ that pesky Sid’s been and gone an’ found it! Thar’s whar he is, now, with them Apaches, I’ll bet my hoss! Wouldn’t that knock ye dead?” Silent, majestic, imposing, Red Mesa shimmered in the morning sun, high above all. That it held the secret of Sid’s disappearance and explained the mystery of these Apaches was a conclusion that Big John jumped to instinctively. And then a shrill squall of triumph rang out high on the mountain side above him! Big John crawled to a better outlook and gazed upward. Exposed on a ragged pinnacle, Vasquez stood waving a rifle triumphantly over his head and screaming in Spanish unintelligibly. That he had seen Red Mesa, too, and was calling to himself all his guerrillas there was no doubt at all!