Chapter VIII

The boys slept soundly between two excellent Mission blankets in a corner of the hut, whose walls and floors had been well swept with Mission brooms. Anastacio, despite his contempt for the trammels of civilisation, had developed an aristocratic taste or two. He slept by the door, but when the boys awoke he was not there. The pueblo, but for two sentinels standing before the door, was apparently deserted. The sun was looking over the highest peak, suffusing the black aisles of the forest with a rosy glow, reddening the snow on hut and level and rocky heights. There was not a sound except the faint murmur of the treetops.

"Where is the world?" asked Roldan. "Are there ranches, with cavalcades and bull-fights, lazy caballeros lying in hammocks smoking cigarritos, or dancing the night through with silly girls? Dios de mi alma! I feel as if I did not care."

"Caramba!" exclaimed Adan, "I am famished. Do you suppose they have left us anything to eat?"

"I suppose there is nothing to do but ask one of these dogs to be good enough to give us breakfast--no, not ask. I could starve, but not beg of an Indian."

He beckoned haughtily to one of the sentinels, who approached and saluted respectfully.

"Breakfast," said the young don, curtly. "We wish to eat at once."

The Indian went over to a large stone oven and took out four meal cakes, which he carried to the boys, then fetched them fruit and wine.

"Where is Anastacio and the others?" asked Roldan, breakfast over.

"In the temascal."

Roldan sprang to his feet. "Do you hear that, Adan?" he cried. "We have always wanted to see Indians in temascal." To the sentinel, "Take us there at once."

The Indian scowled. "But for you, senor, we, too, are in the temascal."

"Take us to the temascal," said Roldan, peremptorily, and the savage, in whom servility had been planted by civilisation, yielded to the will of the aristocrat. He bent his shoulders and said: "Bueno; come!"

The boys followed him through the brush, the sweet-scented chaparral on which the honey-dew still lingered, to another and smaller clearing. Here were several long rows of earthen huts, three or four feet high, out of which smoke poured through an aperture in the roof of each. Near by was a broad creek to which the bank sloped gently from the clearing. The creek, some three feet deep, murmured over coloured stones and sprouting trees. The long fine strands of the ice grass trailed far over the water, motionless. Huge bunches of maidenhair, delicate as green lace, clung to the steep bluffs on the opposite side. Forests of ferns grew close to the water's edge. Down through a rift in the cliffs tumbled a mountain stream over its rocky bed.

"Are they stewing in