Yosemite glow with a solemn beauty. The chasm looked like the raw and terrible wound of fire. Its blackened and twisted acclivities might have been the scars of some terrible torment.
A river lay through the center of this cicatrix, and although later it proved nearly half a mile wide, it was reduced to a mere rivulet amid such cyclopean setting. It twisted in and out, now lost to view, now shimmering in the distance, everywhere taking the color of its surroundings and looking for the world like one of those dull, spreading adders winding through the valley.
Pethwick now fully understood why the Indians had given the peculiar name to the river. It was a sobriquet any human being would have bestowed upon it at first glimpse. It required no guide to tell Pethwick he was looking down upon the Rio Infiernillo.
“This is the place, señor,” said Pablo Pasca.
“Do we start back from here?”
Pethwick looked at him in surprise.
“We'll spend the next sixty days in this valley.”
“I mean Cesare and myself, señor,” explained the Zambo in hangdog fashion.
“You and Cesare!”
“We have shown you the Valley of the Rio Infiernillo—that was all we promised, señor,” pursued Pablo doggedly.
Ruano glanced around. “Speak for yourself, Pablo!”
“You are not going into this den of Satan, are you?” cried Pablo to the murderer. “Past these— these”—he nodded at the skeletons.
Ruano grinned, showing two rows of big white teeth. “I'll go help make some more skeletons,” he said carelessly.
Pethwick began to explain away Pasca's fears.
“Those are nothing but the specimens of a scientific expedition, Pablo.”
“Do scientific expeditions collect skeletons?” shuddered the thief.
“Yes.”
“Will you do that?”
“Very probably.”
“And leave them for the birds to pick?”
“If we don't boil them.” Pethwick grew more amused as the fears of his guide mounted.
“Dios Mio! What for?”
“To study them,” laughed the engineer.
Pablo turned a grayish yellow.
“And you kill men and let the buzzards pick their bones—to study them?” aspirated the half-breed. “Will you kill me—and Ruano?”
“Certainly not!” ejaculated Pethwick, quite shocked. “What a silly idea!”
“But the other gang did, señor,” cried the Zambo, nodding at the skeleton of the man at the end of the line, “and no doubt, señor, they told their guide that all was well, that everything was as it should be, until one fine day—pang!”
“And here he stands, grinning at me, slapping his knee to see another big fool go down the scarp.”
At such a hideous suspicion all three scientists began a shocked denial.
What did Pablo take them for—ghouls? They were civilized men, scientists, professors, engineers, authors
“Then why did you choose for guides two men condemned to death unless it was to kill them and stay within the law?”
They reassured the robber so earnestly that he was half convinced, when unfortunately an extra gust of wind set the skeleton clapping his knee again.
The gruesome mirth set Pablo almost in a frenzy.
“Ehue! Yes! But how did the other party get their man? No doubt they found a dead man in this devil's country! Oh, yes, dead men are frequent in this place where men never go! They didn't kill their guide to study his bones. Oh, no! Not at all! Ha! No! He dropped dead. Very reasonable! Ho!”
With a yell he dropped his mule's rein and leaped for the mouth of the trail.
But Cesare Ruano was quicker than the thief. The murderer made one leap, caught the flying Zambo by the shoulder and brought him in a huddle on the stones.
The robber shrieked, screamed, began a chattering prayer.
“Oh, Holy Mary! Blessed Virgin! Receive my soul! I am to be killed! Blessed Queen!”
The words seemed to arouse some sort of anger in Cesare, for the big fellow shook Pablo till his teeth rattled.
“Shut up squeaking, you rabbit! Can't you tell when a man is about to murder you? These are gentlemen ! You will stay with this party, coward ! and do the work! You will help me! I will not leave them and neither will you. Sabe?”
As he accented this “Sabe?” with a violent shake, Pablo's head nodded vigorously whether he wanted it to or not.
Oddly enough the trouncing seemed to reassure Pasca more than all the arguments of the scientists.
“You are a shrewd man, Cesare,” he gasped as soon as he was allowed to speak. “Are you sure they won't hurt us?”
Ruano laughed again, with a flash of teeth.
“They can't hurt me. I could mash these little men with my thumb. Whom are you afraid of, Pablo—the old gray man who can hardly walk?”
“Why, no,” admitted the thief looking at M. Demetriovich.
“Or of that bean-pole boy, whose head is so weak he cannot remember the simplest thing without writing it in a book.”
“Nor him either,” agreed Pablo with a glance at Standifer.“
“Or the engineer who cannot lift a hand without gasping for breath?”
“Anyway,” argued Pasca, half convinced, “how did those other geographers manage to kill their guide? Perhaps they shot him when he was asleep.”
“They were not geographers,” snapped Ruano, “at least they were not like these men.”
“How do you know?”
“Could another such a party be in the mountains and all the country not hear of it? Even in prison we heard the great American scientists were going to the Rio Infiernillo. Then take these men—would
