He slept twenty hours.  Then he arose, thirsty, hungry, lame, overworn, and presently went in search of Belding and the business of the day.

“Your Yaqui was near dead, but guess we’ll pull him through,” said Belding.  “Dick, the other day that Indian came here by rail and foot and Lord only knows how else, all the way from New Orleans!  He spoke English better than most Indians, and I know a little Yaqui.  I got some of his story and guessed the rest.  The Mexican government is trying to root out the Yaquis.  A year ago his tribe was taken in chains to a Mexican port on the Gulf.  The fathers, mothers, children, were separated and put in ships bound for Yucatan.  There they were made slaves on the great henequen plantations.  They were driven, beaten, starved.  Each slave had for a day’s rations a hunk of sour dough, no more.  Yucatan is low, marshy, damp, hot.  The Yaquis were bred on the high, dry Sonoran plateau, where the air is like a knife.  They dropped dead in the henequen fields, and their places were taken by more.  You see, the Mexicans won’t kill outright in their war of extermination of the Yaquis.  They get use out of them.  It’s a horrible thing....Well, this Yaqui you brought in escaped from his captors, got aboard ship, and eventually reached New Orleans.  Somehow he traveled way out here.  I gave him a bag of food, and he went off with a Papago Indian.  He was a sick man then.  And he must have fallen foul of some Greasers.”

Gale told of his experience at Papago Well.

“That raider who tried to grind the Yaqui under a horse’s hoofs—­he was a hyena!” concluded Gale, shuddering.  “I’ve seen some blood spilled and some hard sights, but that inhuman devil took my nerve.  Why, as I told you, Belding, I missed a shot at him—­not twenty paces!”

“Dick, in cases like that the sooner you clean up the bunch the better,” said Belding, grimly.  “As for hard sights—­wait till you’ve seen a Yaqui do up a Mexican.  Bar none, that is the limit!  It’s blood lust, a racial hate, deep as life, and terrible.  The Spaniards crushed the Aztecs four or five hundred years ago.  That hate has had time to grow as deep as a cactus root.  The Yaquis are mountain Aztecs.  Personally, I think they are noble and intelligent, and if let alone would be peaceable and industrious.  I like the few I’ve known.  But they are a doomed race.  Have you any idea what ailed this Yaqui before the raider got in his work?”

“No, I haven’t.  I noticed the Indian seemed in bad shape; but I couldn’t tell what was the matter with him.”

“Well, my idea is another personal one.  Maybe it’s off color.  I think that Yaqui was, or is, for that matter, dying of a broken heart.  All he wanted was to get back to his mountains and die.  There are no Yaquis left in that part of Sonora he was bound for.”

“He had a strange look in his eyes,” said Gale, thoughtfully.