Coronado cantered to the off hind wagon, peeped through the rear opening of its canvas cover, discovered the youth lying on a pile of luggage, addressed him in Spanish, and learned his story.  He belonged to a hacienda in Bernalillo, a hundred miles or more west of Santa Fe.  The Apaches had surprised the hacienda and plundered it, carrying him off because, having formerly been a captive among them, he could speak their language, manage the bow, etc.

For all this Coronado cared nothing; he wanted to know why the band had left Bernalillo; also why it had attacked his train.  The boy explained that the raiders had been driven off the southern route by a party of United States cavalry, and that, having lost a number of their braves in the fight, they had sworn vengeance on Americans.

“Did you hear them say whose train this was?” demanded Coronado.

“No, Senor.”

“Do you think they knew?”

“Senor, I think not.”

“Whose band was this?”

“Manga Colorada’s.”

“Where is Delgadito?”

“Delgadito went the other side of the mountain.  They were both going to fight the Moquis.”

“So we shall find Delgadito in the Moqui valley?”

“I think so, Senor.”

After a moment of reflection Coronado added, “You will stay with us and take care of mules.  I will do well by you.”

“Thanks, Senor.  Many thanks.”

Coronado rejoined Thurstane and told his news.  The officer looked grave; there might be another combat in store for the train; it might be an affair with both bands of the Apaches.

“Well,” he said, “we must keep our eyes open.  Every one of us must do his very utmost.  On the whole, I can’t believe they can beat us.”

“Nombre de Dios!” thought Coronado.  “How will this accursed job end?  I wish I were out of it.”

They were now traversing the canon from which they had been so long debarred.  It was a peaceful solitude; no life but their own stirred within its sandstone ramparts; and its windings soon carried them out of sight of their late assailants.  For four hours they slowly threaded it, and when night came on they were still in it, miles away from their expected camping ground.  No water and no grass; the animals were drooping with hunger, and all suffered with thirst; the worst was that the hurts of the wounded could not be properly dressed.  But progress through this labyrinth of stones in the darkness was impossible, and the weary, anxious, fevered travellers bivouacked as well as might be.

Starting at dawn, they finished the canon in about an hour, traversed an uneven plateau which stretched beyond its final sinuous branch gullies, and found themselves on the brow of a lofty terrace, overlooking a sublime panorama.  There was an immense valley, not smooth and verdurous, but a gigantic nest of savage buttes and crags and hills, only to be called a valley because it was enclosed by what seemed a continuous line of eminences.  On the north and east rose long ranges and elevated table-lands; on the west, the savage rolls and precipices of the Sierra del Carrizo; and on the south, a more distant bordering of hazy mountains, closing to the southwest, a hundred miles away, in the noble snowy peaks of Monte San Francisco.