Mexico.

At its extremity, where it narrowed to a width of about fifty feet, lay
a huge boulder of granite that appeared to block up the path; though
there was a clear space between it and the cliff rising vertically
behind it.

The obstruction was only apparent, and did not cause the leading savage
of the party to make even a temporary stop. At one side there was an
opening large enough to admit the passage of a horse; and into this he
rode, Roblez following, and also the mules in a string, one after the
other.

Behind the boulder was an open space of a few square yards, of extent
sufficient to allow room for turning a horse. The savage chief wheeled
his steed, and headed him direct for the cliff; not with the design of
dashing his brains against the rock, but to force him into a cavern,
whose entrance showed its disc in the facade of the precipice, dark and
dismal as the door of an Inquisitorial prison.

The horse snorted, and shied back; but the ponderous Mexican spur, with
its long sharp rowel-points, soon drove him in; whither he was followed
by the mustang of Roblez and the mules--the latter going in as
unconcernedly as if entering a stable whose stalls were familiar to
them.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

A TRANSFORMATION.

It was well on in the afternoon of the following day before the four
spoil-laden savages who had sought shelter in the cave again showed
themselves outside. Then came they filing forth, one after the other,
in the same order as they had entered; but so changed in appearance that
no one seeing them come out of the cavern could by any possibility have
recognised them as the same men who had the night before gone into it.
Even their animals had undergone some transformation. The horses were
differently caparisoned; the flat American saddle having been removed
from the back of the grand Kentucky steed, and replaced by the deep-tree
Mexican _silla_, with its _corona_ of stamped leather and wooden
_estribos_. The mules, too, were rigged in a different manner, each
having the regular _alpareja_, or pack-saddle, with the broad
_apishamores_ breeched upon its hips; while the spoils, no longer in
loose, carelessly tied-up bundles, were made up into neat packs, as
goods in regular transportation by an _atajo_.

The two men who conducted them had altogether a changed appearance.
Their skins were still of the same colour--the pure bronze-black of the
Indian--but, instead of the eagle's feathers lat