To Glen Eddy and "Billy" Brackett the situation looked serious, and almost desperate, as they confronted that crowd of angry savages who advanced towards them so steadily, and with such unmistakable meaning.

"It's a tough outlook for us," muttered the latter.

"Yes," answered Glen, "it is, but—" Here the boy clinched his teeth, and clutched his rifle more firmly.

"Look out!" cried the other, noticing that the Indians were gathering themselves for a rush. "They're coming!" and he raised his rifle.

In another instant he would have fired, and their fate would have been sealed. But their time had not yet come; for, at that same moment, another figure bounded down the low bank, and stood beside them facing the Indians, and speaking angrily to them in Spanish. They evidently understood him, and hesitated. He was the Mexican axeman.

"What is the trouble, Mr. Brackett?" he asked hurriedly, in English.

With a few words they made the situation clear to him, and he, in turn, quickly explained to the Indians that these white men had merely tried to save their lives by preventing them from eating poisoned meat.

"Tell them to look at the dog!" cried Glen, pointing to the poor animal that had swallowed the very bit of meat he had snatched from the Indian, and which was evidently dying.

The sight was a powerful argument, worth more than all the words that could have been spoken.

The Indians sullenly returned to their fire and sat down, while our friends, casting many watchful glances over their shoulders as they went, made good their retreat in the direction of their own camp.

"What kind of Indians were they?" asked Glen, of the Mexican, when they had lost sight of their unpleasant acquaintances.

"Navajos," was the answer.

They were indeed a wretched band of the once wealthy and powerful tribe who claimed that whole country as a pasture-land for their countless flocks and herds. For many years they had been hunted and killed, their flocks driven off and their growing crops destroyed wherever found, until now the main body of the tribe was being slowly starved out of existence on a small reservation in Eastern New Mexico. It was so small that no more Indians could be crowded into it, and the miserable remnant, who still lurked in the fastnesses of their own country, despoiled of all means of procuring a livelihood, prowled about like so many hungry dogs, gleaning the offal from white men's camps, and hunted like wild beasts by all whom they were unfortunate enough to meet.

This band had probably followed Mr. Hobart's party for the sake of what might be picked up in their abandoned camps, and had evidently regarded the poisoned meat, discovered that very morning, as a perfect godsend.

"I reckon we'll have to manage somehow to get along without any wolves," said "Billy" Brackett.

"Yes," replied Glen, regretfully, "I suppose we shall."

Ten miles of line were run that day, through the solemn pine forest, and darkness overtook the party on the very summit of the great Continental Divide. They were crossing the Sierra Madre Mountains, through ZuÑi Pass. As Glen subtracted the last reading of his rod for the day from the last height of instrument, and found that it gave an elevation of 7925 feet, he uttered a shout. For weeks the elevations above sea-level had been steadily mounting upward. This one was a foot lower than the last.

"Hurrah!" he cried, "we are on the Pacific Slope."

It was hard to realize that water, on one side of where they stood, would find its way into the Rio Grande, and so on into the Atlantic, while that but a few feet away would flow through the Colorado into the Pacific. The country did not look any different, but it seemed so. They actually seemed to be breathing the air of the mighty sunset ocean, and this one day's run seemed to place the States, and everything eastern, farther behind them than all the rest of their journey. About the camp-fires that evening the conversation was wholly of California and the golden West, and they sprang to their work the next day with an added zeal.

Fifty miles west of this point they came to ZuÑi, one of the most picturesque and by far the most interesting of American towns. First, though, a few miles east of ZuÑi, they halted beside the magnificent pile of El Moro, or Inscription Rock, that lifted its frowning battlements, like those of some vast Moorish castle, four hundred feet above the plain. Its base is covered, on all sides, with Indian hieroglyphics, Spanish inscriptions, and English names. Curiously, and almost reverently, our explorers bent down the brushwood near its left-hand corner, and searched until they found the most ancient inscription of all:

"Don Joseph de Basconzeles 1526."

There is nothing more, and this is the sole existing record of Don Joseph's having lived and explored this country while Cortez was still occupying the city of Mexico. Where he came from, who he was, what companions he had, and whither he went will never be known; but through all the centuries that have passed since he carved his name on El Moro's base, the great rock has faithfully preserved the record of his presence.

The next inscription was made nearly one hundred years later, and is a Spanish legend that is translated into, "Passed by this place with despatches, April 16, 1606." There is no name signed, and who passed by on that day can never be told. Then follows innumerable names of Spanish dons, captains, bishops, soldiers, and priests, with varying dates that come down as late as the beginning of the present century.

The first English inscription is, "O. R., March 19, 1836." Then came Whipple, in 1853, followed by many other American soldiers and gold-seekers. Now Glen Eddy and "Billy" Brackett added their names beneath those of the others of Mr. Hobart's party. Then they, too, passed on, leaving a new page of history to be preserved by El Moro for the eyes of future generations.

For some hours before reaching ZuÑi they could see it crowning the hill that uplifts it conspicuously above the level of the surrounding plain. It was the "Cibola" of the earliest Spanish explorers, the chief of the seven "golden cities" that they believed to exist in that region, and whose alleged riches led them to undertake the conquest of the country. They called it "Cibola" until they reached it. Then they adopted the native name of ZuÑi (pronounced Zoon-ya), by which it has been known ever since.

The town, or city, contained some twelve hundred inhabitants, and the hill on which it is built slopes gently up from the plain on one side, but falls away in a precipitous bluff to the narrow waters of the ZuÑi River on the other.

"Billy" Brackett had read up on this ancient city of Cibola, and had imparted so much of his information to Glen as to arouse a curiosity in the boy's mind regarding the place fully equal to his own. So, as soon as they reached camp, which was on the plain at the foot of the hill, they hurried off to "do" the town.