pt soundly
that night, a band of Indians guarding our camp and herd under orders
of Manuelito, who had become my stanch friend and admirer. The
following day we came to the end of the reservation and soon crossed
the boundary line of New Mexico into Arizona.

CHAPTER IX.

IN ARIZONA

I left New Mexico with the intention of making Los Angeles in the
golden State my future home, and now, thirty years later, I have not
reached there yet. Vainly have I tried to break the thraldom of my
fate, for I did not know that here I was to meet face to face with the
mighty mystery of an ancient cult, the God of a long-forgotten
civilization, a psychic power which has ordered my path in life and
controlled my actions.

As its servant, at its bidding, I write this, and shall now unfold, and
in the course of this narrative give to the world a surprising
revelation of the power of ancient Aztec idols, which would be
incredible in the light of our twentieth century of Christian
civilization if it were not sustained by the evidence of undeniable
facts.

Our road led through a hilly country toward the Little Colorado River.
In the distance loomed the San Francisco Mountains, extinct craters
which had belched fire and lava long, long ago at the birth of Arizona,
when the earth was still in the travail of creation. We forded the
Little Colorado at Sunset Crossing, a lonely colony, where a few
Mormons were the only inhabitants of a vast area of wilderness. We were
headed due west toward a mesa rising abruptly from the plateau which we
were then traversing. This mesa was again capped by a chain of lofty
peaks, one of the Mogollon mountain ranges. We ascended the towering
mesa through the difficult Chavez pass, which is named after its
discoverer, the noted Mexican, Colonel Francisco Chavez, who may be
remembered as a representative in Congress of the United States, for
the Territory of New Mexico. A day's heavy toil brought us to the
summit of the mesa, which was a beautiful place, but unspeakably
lonesome. This wonderful highland is a malpais or lava formation and
densely covered with a forest of stately pines and mountain juniper.
Strange to say, vegetation thrives incredibly in the rocky lava; a
knee-high growth of the most nutritious grama grasses, indigent to this
region, rippled in the breeze like waves of a golden sea and we saw
numerous signs of deer, antelope, and turkey. Our road, a mere trail,
wound over this plateau,