rt is like the sea, abounding in pirates, and the soul of Cuchillo
is full of treason: it seems to me that the villain will be fatal to
us."

Suddenly Diaz dismounted, and picked up off the sand a dark object; it
was a kind of valise, which Diaz at once recognised as belonging to
Cuchillo.

"This shows you, Senor," said he, "that we are in the right path, and
that the coming day will bring us into the presence of the traitor."

"It shall then be his last treason," said Don Estevan; and they now rode
silently on with the certainty that Cuchillo was before them.

Strange chain of coincidences! When the sun appeared in the horizon,
the different actors in this drama, apparently drawn together by
accident, but in truth impelled onwards by the hand of God, had met in
the most inaccessible part of the great American desert.

CHAPTER FORTY SIX.

THE GOLDEN VALLEY.

The darkness was no longer that of midnight--the outlines of the
different objects began to be visible, and the peaks of the hills looked
like domes or fantastic turrets in the half-light. Detached from the
mass of the mountains, a rock in the form of a truncated cone towered up
like an outwork. A cascade fell noisily from an adjacent hill into a
deep gulf below, and in front of the rock a row of willows and
cotton-trees indicated the neighbourhood of a stream. Then the immense
plain of the delta formed by the two arms of the Rio Gila (which from
east to west cuts for itself a double passage through the chain of the
Misty Mountains) displayed itself in all its sombre majesty. Such were
the striking points of the landscape which opened before the travellers.

Soon the blue light of morning replaced the darkness, and the summits of
the hills one by one became visible. On the top of the rock two pines
could now be seen, their bending stems and dark foliage extending over
the abyss. At their foot the skeleton of a horse, held up by hidden
fastenings, showed upon his whitened bones the savage ornaments with
which he had been embellished, and fragments of the saddle still rested
upon his back. The increasing light soon shone on more sinister
emblems: on posts raised in different places, and human scalps floating
on them. These hideous trophies indicated the burial-place of an Indian
warrior. In fact a renowned chief reposed there; and his spirit
overlooked, like the genius of plunder, those plains where his war-cry
had so often resounded, and which