"What can you compare the sound to?" asked Jack.
It was the next morning, and Ralph was relating his experiences.
"Well, it sounded like some one 'tap-tapping,' as well as I can explain it," replied Ralph.
"Whereabouts?" asked Walt, leaning forward from the interested circle.
"I don't know. It seemed to come from everywhere at once."
"But it stopped right off when you hollered?" asked Pete.
"Yes. I didn't hear another sound."
"What do you suppose it could have been, Pete?" asked Jack.
"Dunno. Mexican woodpecker, maybe," grinned the cow-puncher, "or maybe a little overdose of im-ag-in-at-ion."
"I tell you I couldn't have been mistaken," exclaimed Ralph hotly. "I heard it as clearly as I hear your voice now."
At this moment the clank of the metal bar of the door falling announced that the portal was about to be opened, and they all gazed upward expectantly as the studded oak swung back. Two figures appeared. The first was that of a Mexican carrying a big tray of steaming food and a water-cooler. The other newcomer was the renegade cowboy, whom Pete had recognized the night before.
"Well, they don't mean to starve us, anyhow," said Jack, as his eyes fell on the food.
"Hum, poisoned, like as not," put in Ralph.
"I confess that I would dare even poison, such are my pangs of hunger," spoke the professor.
Pete did not say a word, but kept his eyes fixed on the renegade cow-puncher.
"Nice business you're in, Jim Cummings," he growled. "Since when have you become a cattle-rustling, tamale-eating greaser?"
"Now, see here, Pete, don't rile me," growled the other, a short, red-faced man with bow legsand whiny voice. "What I'm doing is my own business, and I reckon I can mind it."
"Yes, some folks don't mind what they do," observed Coyote Pete grimly, "even down to associating with a bunch of cattle thieves and horse-rustlers.
"There's a real nice specimen of the human toad," he went on, turning to his companions. "That feller yonder, Jim Cummings, was once a decent white man, punching cattle and shooting up the town on pay nights, like a Christian. Now look at him——"
But Jim Cummings had turned and was running for his life. He could not stand the raking cross fire of Pete's biting sarcasm. The Mexican who had brought them their food followed him out.
"Why, we could have overpowered those fellows and escaped," said Jack. "If we could once get our ponies, we'd give these ruffians a race to the pass, and——"
"Yep, but that 'If' is a big word, sonny," said Pete grimly. "I reckon you didn't see something I did when that door opened."
"No—what?" chorused the boys.
"Why, four of the handsomest looking rascals unhung parading up and down with rifles. But let's get some of this grub down. That Black Ramon is likely to pay us a call after grub time, and if I'd see him first he'd take my appetite away."
Despite Ralph's gloomy fears of poison, they made a good breakfast, although some of the dishes were so peppery and fiery they could hardly eat them.
"If Peary could have had some of this at the North Pole," said Jack, as he hastily swallowed several gulps of water.
"Or Doc Cook," grinned Walt.
"Yes, andifwe could be in Albuquerque right now," laughed Coyote Pete.
As he spoke the door opened once more, this time to give entrance to the Mexican leader himself. As if he was not inclined to take any chances in trusting himself with the Americans, Ramon de Barrios was accompanied by two other of his countrymen. He lost no time in coming to the point.
"You boy there, Stetson," he said, pointing to Ralph, "how much is your father worth?"
"I suppose about five million dollars," said Ralph wonderingly.
"Phew!" exclaimed Coyote Pete, "I didn't know there was so much money in the world."
"Silence," growled Diego, looking at him from under his black brows. "And your father loves you?" he went on to Ralph.
"Yes, of course," rejoined the Eastern boy.
"Hum! Well, if you ever want to see him again you must do as I say."
"What is that?"
"Write him a letter telling him to send a messenger with twenty thousand dollars to a place I shall designate. If he does so I will let you go free. If not—well——"
Black Ramon compressed his lips and gave Ralph a look not pleasant to see. It seemed to promise ominously for the future.
"But what about my friends?" demanded Ralph.
"The same condition applies to Merrill, onlyin his case, as his father is poorer, I shall be considerate and only demand ten thousand dollars."
"You can have my answer now," spoke up Jack. "It is—'No'!"
"The same goes here," chimed in Ralph slangily, but with conviction.
"What, you won't do it? Boys, you must be mad. You do not know the means I can use to enforce my demand. If you fear to cause your parents alarm, I can cause them more suffering by sending them word that you are dead."
The Mexican gave a smile of triumph as he saw a serious look cross the boys' faces. The thought of what this would mean—of the grief into which it would plunge their families, made them shiver, but neither hesitated when the cattle-rustler asked once more:
"Well, what do you say?"
"Still—no," said Jack.
"That's me!" snapped Ralph.
"In any event," demanded Jack, "suppose we did sign, what would you do with our friends?"
"That would concern me only," said the Mexican. "As for this cow-puncher here——"
"Mister Pete De Peyster is my name," spoke up Coyote Pete, caressing his yellow mustache.
"Well, De Peyster, then, I have an old score to even up with you——"
"Oh, you mean about the time I snaked you off your horse when you were going to ill-treat a pony," said Pete. "Yep, I reckon the bump you landed with must have left some impression on your greaser mind."
Black Ramon stepped forward. It looked for a second as if he was going to strike the venturesome cow-puncher, but instead he restrained himself and remarked in a calm voice, even more terrible than a raging tone would have been:
"As you are in my power to do as I like with, I will not discuss the matter with you. I will think it over. You know I am good at thinking up original punishments."
Jack shuddered at the level, cold-blooded tones of the man. Some of the most terrible tales of the border had to do with the fiendish tortures thought of by the man before them. But Pete was undismayed, at least outwardly.
"Anyhow, Ramon," he said, "you ought to getsomebody to touch off your dynamite who will be on the job when wanted. That fellow you had on the battery at the bridge must have got cold feet at the critical moment, eh? If he had touched off the charge at the right time he could have blown us all to Kingdom Come. As it is, Mr. Merrill and Bud Wilson are safe, and sooner or later they'll take it out of your yellow hide, whatever you may do to us now."
Now Pete had an object in talking thus. He wanted if possible to find out what had become of the ranch party when the bridge was blown up. If he expected to learn anything, however, he was disappointed, as the Mexican was far too crafty to be led into so easy a trap.
"Oh-ho, you are trying to draw me out to learn what became of your friends," he grinned. "Well, what if I should tell you they were blown up?"
"Wa'al, personally, I'd say you were an all-fired liar!" drawled Pete.
"Before long, what you say will not matter," snarled the Mexican, "you, or the boy Walt Phelps. I owe your father a grudge," he continued,turning to the red-headed ranch boy, "and I mean to avenge myself with you."
Walter gazed back at the wretch as calmly as had Pete. He said nothing, however. He did not wish to betray by even a quaver in his voice that his feelings were in a state of tumult.
"As for you, you bony old man," said the Mexican, turning to professor Wintergreen, "I have a mind to marry you off to an old Indian squaw, and keep you 'round here as our medicine man."
"In that case I know the medicine I should prescribe for you," said the professor calmly.
"What, if you please?" asked the Mexican, with mock humility.
"Six bullets in the region of your black heart," snapped out the man of science.
"Bully! Good for you!" yelled Pete, capering about and giving the professor a slap on the back that sent the savant's spectacles flying.
"I will give you boys till to-morrow to think this over," said the Mexican, deciding, apparently, not to tamper any more with such an edged tool as the professor. "In the meantime, I havedecided to separate you. Merrill, you and this cow-puncher I shall confine elsewhere; you are too dangerous to leave with the rest of them."
He gave a shrill whistle and instantly ten men appeared from the door. Under Black Ramon's directions they bound and blindfolded Pete and Jack Merrill.
"I have a place where I keep such firebrands as you two," said Ramon in his most vindictive tone, as amid exclamations of dismay from their companions the cow-puncher and the ranchman's son were led from the old chapel.
Blindfolded, and almost bereft of the power of thought by the sudden order of the chief of cattle-rustlers, Pete and his young companion were led forth by Black Ramon's men. To Jack's surprise—for he had not noticed any building near to the old mission the night they had arrived—they seemed to travel some distance before they halted. Presently he felt their guides impelling him forward over what seemed to be a threshold.
Suddenly their eye bandages were roughly removed, and the two prisoners were able to look about them. They found themselves in a small chamber lighted by one tiny window high up on a whitewashed wall. The floor was of red tiling, and gave out a solid ring beneath the feet.
"I guess you'll be safe enough in here,"grinned Ramon, gazing at the substantial walls and the huge door of iron-studded oak. "If you escape from this place you'll be cleverer than the cleverest Yankees I ever heard of."
After giving their guards some brief directions to keep a close watch on the door, Black Ramon strode out of the place. The portal was immediately banged to, and the prisoners were alone.
"Well, Jack, out of the frying-pan into the fire, eh?" said Pete, looking about him with a comical expression of despair.
"It certainly looks that way," agreed Jack; "and what's worse, we're cut off from our friends. I wonder what measures Ramon will use to compel Ralph to write that letter to his father," went on Jack.
"Kind of a weak sister, that there tenderfoot, ain't he?" asked Pete with a grin.
"I guess you've never seen Ralph charging down the gridiron in the last half, when the whole game hung on his shoulders or you wouldn't say that, Pete," reproved Jack. "There isn't a boy alive who is cleaner cut, or grittierthan Ralph Stetson, but he's not used to the West and I'm afraid that lemon-colored rascal may work some tricks on him."
"That's what I'm afraid of, too," chimed in Pete. "These greasers can think up some great ways to make a feller change his mind."
"If only we knew that dad and the rest were safe, I would feel easier in my mind," said Jack after a brief interval, during which neither had spoken.
"Boy," said Pete, in a tenderer tone than Jack had ever heard the rough cow-puncher use, "as I told you a while back, it's my solemn belief that Mr. Merrill and the rest are alive, and at this minute figuring out some way to get us out of this scrape. But if anything has happened to them, it's going to be the sorriest day in their lives for these Border greasers. There isn't a cow-puncher in New Mexico, or along the border from the Gulf to the Colorado River, that wouldn't take a hand in the trouble that's going to come."
This was an unusually long and an unusually earnest speech for Coyote Pete to make, and asif ashamed of his display of emotion, he at once set to work looking busily about him.
What he saw was not calculated to elevate his spirits. The room, or rather chamber, was so small that its dimensions could not have exceeded six by seven or eight feet. It was, in fact, more a cell than a room.
In the massive oak door was a small peephole, high up, through which every now and then the evil face of one of their guards would peer.
"I wonder what he thinks we are up to?" asked Pete with a quizzical grin. "Not much room in here to do anything but think, and precious little of that."
"Where are we, do you think, Pete?" asked Jack, after another interval of silence.
"Haven't any idee," rejoined Pete. "I reckon we're quite some distance from the mission, though."
"Let's take a peep out of the door," said Jack suddenly. "That fellow hasn't looked in lately; maybe he's gone to dinner, or something."
"Well, there's no harm in trying, anyhow," said Pete, going toward the portal. "I can pullmyself up to the hole by my hands, and if he's there the worst that greaser can give me is a crack over the knuckles."
But as he placed his hands on the edge of the peephole Jack suddenly held up his hand.
"Hark!" he exclaimed.
From outside came a deep nasal rumble.
"Ach-eer, Ach-eer!"
"He's snoring!" exclaimed Pete.
"Off as sound as a top," supplemented Jack. "Up you go, Pete."
But the cow-puncher, after a prolonged scrutiny, was only able to report that the passage outside was too dark for him to see anything.
"We'll try the window," suggested Jack.
"How are we going to get up there?"
"You boost me on your shoulders. I can see out then."
"All right," said Pete, making "a back."
Jack nimbly mounted the cow-puncher's shoulders and shoved his face into the window. As his eyes fell on the scene outside he gave a gasp of amazement.
In the distance were the rugged outlines of theHachetas, with the rolling foothills lying between. Beyond that rugged barrier—how far beyond Jack realized with an aching heart—lay the United States. But all this was not what caused him to gasp with surprise. It was the fact that, peering out of the window, he was looking directly down upon the tiled roof of the mission. Despite the fact that they had appeared to have been marched for a distance from it, they were still imprisoned in Black Ramon's stronghold in an upper story. In the belfry tower, in fact.
"Consarn it all," muttered the cow-puncher angrily, as Jack told him this, "I might have known they'd have adopted that old trick of blindfolding you and then walking you round in a circle. I defy any one to tell how far he's gone when those methods are used."
"Gee, I'd give a whole lot to be that fellow down below there," mused Jack, looking about him from his vantage point.
"What's he doing?" asked Pete.
"Practicing at a post with a lariat. He looks as happy as if——"
"He hadn't a sin on his greaser soul," Pete finished for him.
"Hullo!" exclaimed the Border Boy suddenly, still from his post on Pete's shoulder, "I can see Ramon going up to the lariat thrower. He's pointing up here."
The boy ducked quickly. An instant later he again looked out cautiously.
"I guess Ramon was changing the guard," he said. "I saw him point up here, and now that fellow's coming up to the tower entrance by a flight of open steps."
"Is he still carrying that lariat?" asked Pete, in a quick, eager voice.
"Yes; why?"
"Oh, never mind. I just wish I had it, that's all. It would help pass the time away. Say, get down, will you, Jack, if you've done enough gazing. You're getting to be a heavyweight."
"Well, if we stay here much longer I'll bant a few pounds," replied Jack. "I'm sure it's long after dinner time, and I'm hungry."
As if in answer to his words, the door opened and the same man he had seen practicing withthe rawhide in the yard below suddenly appeared. He put some food and water before them without a word, and withdrew silently. Not before Pete's sharp eyes had noticed, however, that at his waist was fastened the rawhide rope he coveted.
"Starvation isn't part of Ramon's plan, evidently," said Jack, as he ate with an appetite unimpaired by the perils of their situation.
"He's just waiting till to-morrow to see how a day's imprisonment has affected you," said Pete grimly. "If you still refuse to write to your father, he'll begin to put the screws on."
"Poor Ralph," sighed Jack.
"Oh, what wouldn't I give for a corncob pipe full of tobacco," sighed Pete, as their meal was concluded.
"What, you mean you could smoke with all this trouble hanging over us?" exclaimed Jack.
"Why not? It would help me to think. When I'm figgering out anything I always like to have a smoke."
"Then you have a plan?"
"I didn't say so."
"Oh, Pete, tell me what it is. Do you think we can escape?"
"Now, Jack, don't bother a contemplative man," said Pete provokingly. "I ain't going ter deny that I was indulging in speculation, but what I've been thinking out is such a flimsy chance that I'm downright ashamed to talk about it."
Jack, therefore, had to be content with sitting still on the floor of the cell, while Pete knitted his brows and thought and thought and thought.
So the afternoon wore away somehow, and it grew dark.
In the meantime, Jack, from Pete's shoulder, had taken another survey through the window, if such the hole in the solid wall could be called. A desperate hope had come to him that in the darkness they could squeeze through it, and in some way reach the ground. But it was an aspiration that a short survey of the situation was destined to shatter.
A sheer drop down the walls of the tower of a hundred feet or more lay between them and the ground. The only hope of escape lay by the doorway,and the chance of that was so remote that the Border Boy did not let his thoughts dwell on it.
"I guess we don't get any supper," said Jack, as the light in the cell faded out and the place became as black as a photographer's dark room.
"Guess not," assented Pete gloomily. "I could go a visit to the chuck wagon, too. Curious how sitting in a cell stimerlates the appetite. I'd recommend it to some of them dyspetomaniacs you reads of back East."
"I should think that the disease would be preferable to the cure," said Jack.
"Reckon so," said Pete, and once more their talk languished. Two human beings, confined in a small cell, soon exhaust available topics of conversation.
Suddenly the door opened, and the man who had brought them their dinner appeared. As he came inside the cell Pete rapidly slipped to the door. As the cow-puncher had hardly dared to hope, a brief glance showed him the passage was empty.
Then things began to happen.
Backward he fell, and lay sprawling on the floor like some ungainly spider.
Backward he fell, and lay sprawling on the floor like some ungainly spider.
The Mexican, with a quick exclamation, had faced round as the cow-puncher made a dart for the portal, and leveled his pistol. Before he could utter the cry which quivered on his lips, Coyote Pete's knotty fist drove forward like a huge piston of flesh and muscle. The force of the blow caught the Mexican full in the face, almost driving his teeth down his throat. Backward he fell, and lay sprawling on the floor like some ungainly spider. The terrific concussion of the blow had rendered him temporarily unconscious.
"Quick, Jack," cried Pete, under his breath, swiftly shutting the great door.
"What are you going to do?" gasped the boy. Events had happened with such lightning-like rapidity that he had hardly had time to comprehend what had taken place, and stood staring at the limp form on the floor of the cell.
With quick, nervous fingers Pete, who had stooped over the fallen Mexican, seized the rawhide rope he carried at his waist—the one with which Jack had seen the fellow practicing.
"Now then, up on my shoulders, Jack, and take the rope with you," he ordered.
Jack didn't know what was to come, but obeyed the resourceful plainsman without a question.
"Through the window," came Pete's next command, and then Jack began to understand the other's daring plan. Without waiting for further orders from Pete, he crawled through the opening. He no sooner found himself on a ledge outside before he turned cautiously and lay on his stomach across the broad embrasure and extended both his hands within. Pete grabbed them, and bracing his feet against the wall, soon clambered up. As the cow-puncher climbed and got a grip on the sill, Jack retreated along the narrow ledge outside. Presently Pete, too, clambered through and joined him.
"What next?" asked Jack in a low voice.
"Blamed if I know," rejoined Pete cheerfully.
The two adventurers were in about as insecure a position as could be imagined. Their feet rested on a ledge of masonry not much more than six inches in width, which circled the bell tower. The ground was a hundred feet or more belowthem. The lariat they had with them, and which was securely fastened in Pete's belt, was not more than thirty feet at the most.
As they hesitated in the darkness, scarcely daring to breathe on their insecure perch, there came a sudden shout from within the tower.
"Wa'al, they've found out that something's up," grunted Pete, while Jack's blood seemed to turn to ice in his veins. Below them was empty space; above, the Mexican outlaws.
"Hark!"
It was Jack who uttered the exclamation.
The shouts were growing louder. Evidently the Mexicans had kept a closer watch than he or Pete had imagined, and had quickly taken alarm at the prolonged absence of their companion.
The boy could hear them battering the oak door of the cell they had so recently occupied.
"Let 'em batter away," muttered Pete. "I shot the bolt on the inside."
To his amazement, Jack actually heard his companion chuckle. What could the cow-puncher be made of, steel or granite, or a combination of both!
And now Pete began to wriggle along the ledge, pressing with all his weight against the wall.
"Come on," he breathed to Jack, "throw all your weight inward and don't look up or down."
In mortal fear of finding his body hurtling backward into vacancy at any moment, the boy followed the intrepid cow-puncher along the narrow footpath. Perhaps it needed more pluck on his part to proceed along the insecure ledge in the pitchy blackness than it did on the part of the nervy cow-puncher. Who shall take the exact measure of courage?
At last they reached the angle of the tower, and Pete stood still. To proceed round the sharp angle, on no wider pathway than that which they trod, would be manifestly impossible. Yet go on they must. Suddenly Pete gave a cry of joy. Looking down into the darkness, he had seen, not more than ten feet beneath them, the sharp ridge of an addition to the old Mission church. If they could reach that he knew, from calculating the height of the tower, they would not be far from the ground.
Behind them the yells and shouts were growing louder.
To think, with Pete, was to act. With a mutteredprayer, one of the few he had ever uttered in his rough life, the cow-puncher crouched as well as he could on the ledge. Putting over first one leg and then the other, he deliberately dropped downward, till his hands gripped the edge of the ledge on which a second before he had stood. His muscles cracked as the sudden strain came on them, but he held fast, and a second later let go. He landed to his intense joy, on a rough tiled roof, after an easy drop of not more than four feet.
"Come on," he breathed upward to Jack, who had watched the cow-puncher's daring act with horrified eyes.
"I—I can't," shivered the boy, who, plucky as he was, dreaded the idea of a drop into the dark. "You go on, Pete, and leave me."
"Not much I won't. You make that drop, or I'll give you the biggest hiding you ever had, Jack Merrill, when I get hold of you."
The cowboy had hit on just the words to bring Jack to the proper pitch to take the leap.
"You ain't scared, are you?" whispered upPete, determined to brace the boy up in the way he knew would prove most effective.
Just as Pete had done a few moments previously, Jack, without a word, knelt for one awful second on the brink of space and then gingerly put over first one leg and then the other. Then followed the same terrible rush into blackness that Pete had experienced, and the same soul-sickening jolt and heart-leap as his fingers gripped, and he hung safe.
"Drop!" snapped Pete.
Jack's fingers obediently unclasped their desperate grip, and he shot downward to be caught in Pete's arms.
"Not so bad when you get used to it," whispered the cow-puncher. "Now then, slide down."
"Slide down—where?"
"This rope. While you were getting ready up there"—even in the dark Jack felt his cheeks flush—"while you were getting ready up there, I fastened that greaser's rope to this old water-spout. All you got to do is to slide down."
A second later Jack flashed down the side ofthe old church to the ground, where, almost as soon as he had landed, Coyote Pete joined him.
"What now?" asked Jack amazedly. He had never dreamed when they stood on that dizzy tower that in less than ten minutes they would be on firm ground. Nor did he forget how much of the so-far successful escape was due to Coyote Pete's skill and resourcefulness. But the hardest and most dangerous part was yet to come.
Already the whole of the old church was aglow with lights, flashing hither and thither, and outside, shout answered shout from a dozen points of the compass.
"We'll run in the direction where there is the least racket," wisely decided Pete.
"Crouch as low as you can, Jack," he ordered, as, doubled almost in half, he darted off into the darkness.
Imitating his guide as best he could, Jack followed, but as ill-luck would have it, their way led past an old well. In the pitch blackness the boy did not avoid what Pete seemed to have steered clear of by instinct. With a crash that woke the echoes, he blundered headlong into a big pile oftin buckets and pails which had been placed there that day. A bull running amuck in a tin shop could hardly have made more noise.
"My great aunt alkali, you've done it now!" growled Pete, as the terrific crash sounded close behind him.
"Oh, go on, Pete! Go on, and leave me," cried Jack miserably. "I'll only hamper you. Go on by yourself."
"I'll go with you or not at all," was Pete's firm rejoinder. "Come on, now, hurry. They're bound to have heard that, and they'll be 'round here like so many hornets in a minute."
Pete's prophecy proved correct. Hardly had the clanging, clashing echoes of the avalanche of dislodged tinware died out, before they heard Black Ramon's voice shouting:
"Over there! Over there by the well. Fire at them."
Jack did not know much Spanish, but he could comprehend this.
"Fire away," muttered Pete grimly, as they rapidly wormed their way along among the scrub. "You'll not do us any harm by shooting at thewell, but you'll drill your rotten tinware full of holes."
But the Mexicans having now recovered from their first excitement, turned their thoughts to other ways of getting back the fugitives than by firing into the darkness after them. To the ears of Jack and Pete was soon borne the trample of horses, and the rattle of galloping hoofs, as Black Ramon's men spread out through the darkness looking for them.
"They're going to form a ring," he whispered, as they squirmed their way along; "that's what they're going to do. They know we are without horses or weapons, and that if they only make the ring large enough they're bound to get us."
On and on they crept, so close to the ground that the burning dust, which had a plentiful ad-mixture of alkali in it, filled their eyes and nose. Pete was more or less used to the stuff, having ridden sometimes for days at a time in it behind herds of cattle or horses, but to Jack the smarting sensation in mouth and nostrils was almost unbearable. The stuff fairly choked him.
Suddenly Pete's hand shot out and grippedJack's arm with a viselike pressure. Jack interpreted the signal without a word.
"Stop!"
Down they both crouched in the alkali dust among the brush, hardly daring to breathe.
Long before Jack's ears had caught a sound, Pete's quick eye had detected something. He laid his ear to the ground.
"Too dry," he muttered, after holding it there an instant.
Then he drew from his pocket his knife and opened both blades. The larger he thrust into the earth and placed his ear against the smaller bit of steel.
"Just as I thought. Coming this way!" he muttered. "We'll have to lie low and trust to luck."
Presently the trampling that the cowboy's rough-and-ready telegraph had detected became distinctly audible, and against the star-spattered sky Jack saw two black figures on horseback slowly rise up from a hollow. They came into view as slowly as fairies rising to the stage from a trap-door in a theatre.
Neither Pete nor Jack dared to breathe, as the two figures appeared and paused as if undecided which way to go. Suddenly one of them began to speak.
"No sign of 'em in here, amigo. Say ombre, I tell you what—you ride off to the right, and I'll take the left trail. We've covered all the other ground, and that way we're bound to get 'em."
The Mexican grunted something and rode off in the direction the other had indicated.
"It's Jim Cummings, the dern skunk," whispered Coyote Pete to Jack, his indignation at the idea of being hunted by the renegade cowboy getting the better of his prudence.
For one terrible minute Jack thought they had been discovered. Jim Cummings, who had been riding off, stopped his pony abruptly and faced round in the saddle.
"Queer," he said to himself; "thought I heard something. Guess I'll take a look and see if the critters left any trail through hereabouts. I wouldn't trust myself alone with Coyote Pete, but I know he's got no shooting iron, and I reckonthis will fetch down a dozen like him, or the kid with him."
He patted his revolver—a big forty-four—as he spoke, and dismounted. Throwing his pony's reins over his head, in plainsman's fashion, the renegade struck a match and bent down toward the ground. He was looking to see if Jack or Coyote Pete had passed that way.
What happened then came so quickly that afterward, when he tried to tell it, Jack never could get the successive incidents arranged clearly in his own mind. All that was audible was a frightened gasp from the renegade as the glare of a match fell on Coyote Pete's face. Wet with sweat, plastered with dust, and disfigured by righteous anger at the renegade, Pete's countenance was indeed one to inspire terror in the person suddenly lighting upon it.
Before the gasp had died out of Jim cummings' throat, and before he could utter the cry that somehow refused to come, Coyote Pete, with a spring like that of a maddened cougar, was on him, and bore him earthward with a mighty crash.
"Take that, you coward, you sneak, you traitor!" he snarled vindictively under his breath, as the unfortunate Jim Cummings struggled and his breath came in sharp wheezes. As he spoke, Coyote Pete, temporarily transformed by rage and scorn to a wild beast, savagely hammered Jim Cummings' head against the ground.
He was recalled to himself by Jack, who, after his first moment of startled surprise, realized that unless he interfered Cummings would in all likelihood be killed.
"Pete, Pete, are you mad?" he gasped, seizing the other's arm and staying it, as the furious cow-puncher was about to bring it crashing down into the renegade's face.
"Mad!" repeated Pete, looking up, "well, I guess so. But I'm glad you brought me to my senses, son. I'd hate to have the blood of such a varmint as this on my conscience."
He rose to his feet, still breathing heavily from his furious outburst.
"Phew! but that did me good," he said, rolling the unconscious Cummings over with a contemptuous foot. "I reckon this coyote won't go huntinghis own people with a pack of yellow dogs for a long time to come."
Pete was right, it was many a day before Cummings got over his thrashing, but in the meantime the delay occasioned by Pete's outbreak came near to costing them dear.
A sudden trampling in the darkness behind them made them turn, and they saw dimly the figure of a horseman behind them. The starlight glinted on his rifle barrel as he aimed it at them and covered both the fugitives beyond hope of escape.
"Up your hands!"
The command came from the new arrival in broken, but none the less vigorous and unmistakable English.
But instead of complying with the demand, Coyote Pete did a strange thing. He waved his hands above his head and rushed straight at the man with the rifle. As he had expected, the pony the Mexican bestrode was, like most western animals, only half broken. The sight of this sudden figure leaping toward it out of the brush caused it to wheel sharply with a snort of dismay.
So unexpected was the maneuver that the Mexican, no less than his horse, was taken by surprise. His rifle almost slipped from his fingers as he tried to seize the reins and control his pony. When once more he turned, it was to find himself looking into the business-like muzzle of Jim Cummings' pistol, which Pete had quickly jerked from the unconscious man's holster.
"Now, then, amigo," ordered Pete, "get off. Pronto!"
"But, hombre——" began the Mexican.
"Get off!"
Pete accompanied this command by baring his white teeth in such terrifying fashion that the other quickly dismounted.
"Give me his lariat," ordered Pete to Jack, but never for an instant taking his eyes off the Mexican.
Jack, glad of a chance to be of some use, sprang forward. In a trice he detached the Mexican's lariat from his saddle horn and waited Pete's next order.
"Tie him, and tie him good and tight," ordered the cow-puncher. "Don't mind hurting him. These greasers have got a hide as tough as Old Scratch himself."
It did not take Jack long to bind the follower of Black Ramon hand and foot, and then, with a sarcastic apology, Pete tore off a strip of his not overclean shirt, rolled it in a ball, and shoved it into the Mexican's mouth.
"There, he is hog-tied and silenced, with neatness and dispatch," he said. "Now for Cummings, and then we're off."
Cummings was still insensible, and the operation of tying him with his own rawhide, and forcing a gag into his mouth didn't take long.
"I hate to ride without a lariat," said Pete, "but it can't be helped. And anyhow, we've got two good cayuses by as big a stroke of luck as ever a cow-puncher had. You take that plug of the greaser's, Jack. I've got a fancy to this fellow of Cummings', here. And mind, if anybody says a word to us you let me do the talking."
Soon afterward, both, on a further suggestion of Pete's, wrapped in the bound men's serapes—or cloaks,—the two adventurers set forward toward the north.
"Now we're headed for God's country," grunted Pete, as he kept his eyes fixed on the north star, which is the plainsman's as well as the sailor's night guide.
"How can you locate it without a compass?" asked Jack, as Pete informed him how he had located their direction.
"By the outside stars of the Dipper, Jack," said Pete. "The good Lord put 'em there, I reckon, so as white men situated as you and Iare should have no trouble in finding the way to his country. For, you mark my words, Jack, there ain't no God's country south of the border. It all belongs to the other fellow, and they're working for him in double shifts."
The ponies which they now bestrode were fine little animals—quick as cats on their feet and evidently hard as nails, for their coats were as dry to the touch as kindling wood, despite all the excitement they had undergone.
"Feels good to have a horse between your legs again," said Pete, still in a low, cautious voice, for they were by no means out of danger as yet.
"Yes," whispered Jack, "I've heard it said that a cow-puncher without his pony is only half a man."
"I guess maybe you're right," agreed Pete, urging forward his little animal by a dig in the sides.
"Say, Pete," whispered Jack suddenly, as they rode slowly forward under the star-sprinkled heavens, "I do wish we could go back and make a strike for the freedom of the others. It seems kind of mean for us to be safe and sound here,and leaving them back in the lion's mouth, so to speak."
"Don't worry about that, Jack. By getting over on to good Yankee soil we are doing more to help them than we could in any other way. If we turned back now we might spoil everything, and as to being safe and sound—— Hark!"
Both reined in their ponies and listened intently. From far behind was borne to their ears the distant noise of shouts and cries. Standing on the elevation to which they had now attained, the sounds came through the clear night air with great distinctness.
"They're making a fine hullaballoo," commented Jack. "Do you think they've found Cummings and the other?"
"Don't know. Guess not, though. The sounds seem to be coming from more to the eastward than where we left them; but say, Jack, don't you hear anything else but hollering?"
"Why, yes, I do seem to hear a kind of queer sound; what is it?"
"The very worst sound we could get wind of, Jack—it's bloodhounds."
"Bloodhounds!" gasped Jack, who had read and heard much of the ferocity and tracking ability of the animals. "They will trace us down and tear us to pieces."
"Hum, you've bin readin' Uncle Tom's Cabin, I reckon," sniffed Pete. "No, they won't tear us to pieces, Jack, but what they will do is to round us up and then set up the almightiest yelling and screeching and baying you ever heard. They'll bring the whole hornet's nest down around our ears."
"What are we to do, Pete?" breathed Jack, completely at a loss in the face of this new peril, which seemed doubly hard to bear, coming as it did when escape had seemed certain.
"Dunno. Just ride ahead, I reckon, that's all we can do, and thank our lucky stars it ain't daylight. If only we was a spell farther into the hills, we might strike water, and that would throw them off."
"How would that confuse them?"
"Well, hounds can't track through water. It kills the scent. I'd give several head of beef critters for a sight of a creek right now."
All this time they had been riding ahead, and although it was pitchy dark they could tell that they were rising. Whether they were on a trail or not, they had no means of knowing. That the ground was rough and stony, though, they knew, for the ponies, sure-footed as they were, stumbled incessantly.
"Good thing none of Ramon's men reached out as far as this, or we'd sure be giving ourselves away every time one of these cayuses shakes a foot," grunted Pete.
"I wish it wasn't so black," whispered Jack, who was riding a little in advance. "I can't see a thing ahead. I wonder if—— Oh!"
His pony had suddenly given a wild leap backward, missed its footing, and slid down some sort of a steep bank.
"Jumping gee whilkers, what in blazes!" began Pete, when in just the same way he went sliding forward into space.
Both ponies fetched up, after stumbling several feet down a steep declivity, and the sound that their hoofs made as they did so was one ofthe most welcome that the fugitives could have heard.
Splash! splash!
"Water!" exclaimed Pete. "Our blind luck is just naturally holding out."
"Is it a watercourse?" inquired Jack, "or just a hole."
Pete leaned over, holding on by crooking his left foot against the cantle of his saddle.
"It's a creek, and flowing lively, too," he announced, as he held his hand in the water, "and incidentally, as the newspaper fellers say, I'm thirsty."
"So am I," agreed Jack. "Let's have a drink. Besides, we don't know how long it may be before we get another."
"You've the makings of a cow-puncher in you," approved Pete, slipping from his saddle. Side by side the two lay on the brink of the stream and drank till they could drink no more. The water was cool, though tainted with a slightly alkaline taste common to most mountain creeks in that region. Refreshed, they stood up once more and listened. The baying still came incessantly,accompanied by shouts of encouragement from the riders behind the dogs. It was getting unpleasantly near, also.
"Time for us to cut stick," grunted Pete, swinging himself into his saddle once more. Jack did the same.
"Now to fool 'em," chuckled the cow-puncher.
The ponies' noses were turned up stream, and the sure-footed little animals rapidly traversed the slippery rocks and holes of the creek bed.
"These are great little broncs," said Jack with a sigh, "but don't I wish I had Firewater. I wonder if I'll ever see him again?"
"Sure you will, boy," comforted Pete, although in his own heart he had serious doubts of it. Pete knew that a Mexican loves a good pony above all things, and that once having possession of Firewater, Ramon would let him pass out of his hands willingly, seemed unlikely.
Every now and then, as they stumbled forward in the darkness, they paused and listened. The baying had suddenly stopped, and then broke out afresh with renewed vigor. It had a puzzled note in it, too.
"They're stuck for a time," grunted Pete, "but we haven't shaken them off yet. Yip-ee! hear them dogs holler! They've found the place where we entered the water."
"Then we are out of danger?"
"Not yet, boy. We'll not be out of danger till we're over the border and among our own folks. These greasers are no fools, and in a few minutes they'll realize that we've taken to the water, and be along the bank after us."
"But if we turn out here they won't know in which direction we've gone," argued Jack. "Let's leave the creek here and turn north again."
They had been traveling due east through the night, and he waved his hand as he spoke, toward the left bank of the stream.
"Kiddie, you've got horse sense, all right," approved Pete. "I guess that's the best thing for us to do. Anyhow, we've gone as far as we want to in this direction, and it's time to head for home again."
Home—never had the word held so sweet a sound for either of the two imperiled fugitives.
After some difficulty they found a place in the side of the watercourse up which the ponies could scramble. The little animals were soon once more among the rough, broken ground and stiff scrub brush of the upper foothills. The way was steeper now, and even the inexperienced Jack knew that they must be approaching the mountains themselves. Presently in fact, the darker outlines of the range could be seen dimly against the night, looking at first more like a darker portion of the sky itself than a solid body reared against it.
"Rough going," muttered Pete, "but these little skates are jack rabbits at the work."
"There goes Ramon and his outfit," exclaimed Jack a minute later, when after one of their listeningpauses they heard a clattering of hoofs and confused shouts and baying far below them.
"Yep, and I guess he's a worried greaser right now," grinned Pete. "You see he'll be figuring that if we get clear away it won't be long before he has the soldiers after him and his precious bunch."
"The soldiers?" asked Jack, "United States cavalry men? Why it will take a week to get them."
"No, sonny, not United States chaps, more's the pity. A few of our blue breeches would clean out that confabulation in double-quick time. No, the military I refer to are the Mexican troops. If it's a Saint's day or anything, when they get the order to move they won't budge."
"What, they'll refuse duty?"
"Yep. They'll sit around and smoke cigarettes and play dice till they get good and ready to move, that's the kind of soldier men they have over the border."
"Well, why can't some of our fellows get after Ramon?"
"If they could, sonny, the whole question oftrouble on the border would be over and done with. But you see there's some sort of law—international law, they call it—that works all right in Washington, and so the big bugs there figure out it must be all right here. We couldn't send troops into Mexico after those greaser cattle-rustlers any more than they could send after the rascals that get from Tamale land into the States."
"Then it works both ways?"
"That's just the trouble, it don't. All the Mexican rascals get cotched when they cross into the States, but all kinds of rascals, white, black, yellow and red, escape all their troubles by skipping inter Mister Diaz's country."
"That doesn't seem fair."
"Nor does lots of things in this old world, son, but we've got to grin and bear it, I reckon, just as Ramon ull have to do if he don't pick up our trail."
Such progress did the fugitives make that night that by the time their guiding star began to fade in the sky they found themselves in a wild cañon, rock walled, and clothed, in placeswhere vegetation could find root-hold, with the same fir, madrone and piñon as Grizzly Pass. The rising sun found them still pressing onward. They did not dare to stop, for although they were pretty sure none of the Mexicans would have followed thus far, they were aware that it would be folly to halt till they had put all the miles possible between them and their enemies.
"There's one thing we know now, anyhow," said Pete with some complacency, as they rode on over the rocky ground among the pungent-smelling mountain bay bushes, "and that is that the cañons in these hills split north and south, so that we won't stray that way."
"I read somewhere, too, that you can tell the north because there's more moss on the trunks of the trees on the north side than any other," announced Jack with some pride.
To his chagrin, Pete burst into a laugh.
"That might be all right in Maine, son, for city hunters, but what are you going to do out here where all the water these hills and trees get is needed for something else than moss-making?"
It was about noon, and in that deep gulch thesun was beating down oppressively, when Jack gave a sudden cry.
"Look, Pete, look—a trail!" he cried.
Sure enough, winding among the brush there was a small trail just wide enough for a horse to travel in. The brush scraped their legs as they rode along it.
"Might as well follow it, I guess," said Pete, after a careful scrutiny. "Only one man been along here, so far as I can see. We're still on the Mex. side, though, so have your shooting iron ready in case we run into trouble."
With every sense alert, they rode on for a mile or more, when suddenly the trail gave an abrupt turn, and they saw before them a small hut fashioned roughly out of logs, stones and brush. From its chimney blue smoke was pouring, scenting the woods about with a pleasant incense.
"Cooking," cried Pete, "and that reminds me that my appetite and my stomach have been fighting like a cat and a dog for the last two hours."
"I could eat something myself," said Jack."We haven't had a bite since yesterday noon, you know."
"That's so," assented Pete. "We've been so busy, though, I never noticed it till just now."
"That's queer," said Jack, noting the same curious fact; "neither did I. But I do feel ravenous enough to eat a rhinoceros now."
"Wonder where the boss of this sheebang is?" queried Pete, as on a closer approach no sign of life was apparent about the place.
"Well, he can't be out calling on neighbors," laughed Jack.
"I guess there's no harm in just looking in and taking a peep."
"Better be careful," said Jack. "I've heard that these mountain hermits are a queer lot, and this one might shoot us."
"Hi-yi!" yelled Pete suddenly, "look at that!"
Jack looked, and saw that projecting through a cranny in the stone wall was the rusty muzzle of a rifle, seemingly of big caliber.
There was something uncanny in the sight of this sinister weapon, aimed dead at them, with apparently no human hand to guide it.
"Better get out of range, son," warned Pete, reining over his pony; "that feller might be nervous on the trigger."
But as they swung to one side of the trail the ominous rifle barrel followed, still keeping them covered.
"Confound the fellow!" burst out Jack, hardly knowing whether to be amused or angry, "what does he mean?"
"Business, apparently," grunted Pete dryly.
"Hi, amigo!" the cow-puncher suddenly shouted.
A rude query in Spanish came back from inside the hut.
"Wants to know who we are," he said in an aside to Jack. Then to the hermit:
"We are hunters, and lost in the mountains. Can we get food and water and some fodder for the ponies?"
An almost unintelligible answer came back.
"Wants us to lay down our rifles," translated Pete. "What do you say?"
"I guess we'll have to," said Jack. "I'm sohungry that I feel as if I'd risk anything for a square meal."
"That's the way I feel," agreed Pete. "The ponies, too, are pretty well played out. Reckon we'd better do as he says."
Accordingly, the rifles were dropped on the ground at the ponies' sides, and presently the rusty rifle barrel was withdrawn.
"What now?" wondered Jack.
The solitary cañon-dweller presently appeared at the door of his hut. He was an old man in ragged garments, so tattered as to here and there expose his flesh. His face was wrinkled till it resembled a monkey's more than a human being's. The lower half of his countenance was completely covered by a huge matted growth of white beard. He still kept his aged rifle in his hand as he faced his visitors, as if he was afraid of some treachery.
"Better tell him that we don't mean him any harm," suggested Jack.
Pete translated the boy's remark to the hermit, who chattered rapidly in Mexican in response.While he was talking Jack eyed the queer old man.
"I believe he is crazy," he said to himself. The hermit's beady eyes had a malevolent glare in them, and when they fell on him Jack felt a creepy sort of sensation.
"I don't half like the idea of going into that old fellow's hut," he told himself, "but I guess there's no help for it."
Pete, however, it seemed, felt no such apprehensions, for he was now leading the two ponies round to a small shelter in the face of the mountain which served the old man as a stable. A disreputable-looking "clay-bank" mule, with only one ear and a half, was standing in it disconsolately flopping her whole organ of hearing.
"He don't look very good, but I guess he's all right," said Pete in a low tone, in response to Jack's whispered comment on the old hermit.
Inside the hut they found a smoky sort of stew cooking in a big iron pot. The old Mexican explained that the meat in it was deer flesh, and the vegetables, which were corn, tomatoes, and peppers, came from a small patch he cultivatedbehind his lonely hut. Although they had to eat with one spoon out of the great pot itself, neither of the travelers was in a critical or fastidious mood, and they made a hearty meal.
The food disposed of, Pete, to his huge delight, discovered that the old man had some home-grown tobacco, and having borrowed a black pipe from him, he fell to smoking. All this time Jack was nervous and apprehensive. Once or twice he had caught the ragged old fellow's beady eyes fixed on him, with their strange burning look. His impression that the lonely hut-dweller was insane grew upon him. But Pete seemed quite at his ease. Suddenly the cow-puncher said:
"I'm as sleepy as the Old Scratch, Jack. What do you say if we take forty winks?"
"Better be getting on, Pete; we can sleep later," warned Jack with a wink in the direction of the old man, to show he mistrusted him.
"Ho-ho-ho-hum!" yawned the cow-puncher. "We didn't get enough sleep for a cat last night. Anyhow, the ponies have got to rest up a bit."
As he spoke he threw himself at full length on a rough couch, covered with skins, at one endof the hut, and which apparently served the old hermit for a bed.
Before Jack could remonstrate, Pete, with the quick adaptability of the plainsman, was off in a deep slumber, snoring till the roof of the place shook.
"Well, there's no use waking him if he's as sleepy as all that," thought Jack, who, to tell the truth, was feeling very drowsy himself.
After making a scanty meal, the old man with the shifty eyes shouldered a hoe, and mumbling something, made off. Jack watched him and saw that he took his way up the hillside to his garden where he set to work among the cornstalks.
The occupation seemed so harmless that Jack felt half ashamed of his suspicions. Nevertheless, he was determined to keep a keen lookout. Seating himself in a big chair, roughly fashioned out of logs, with a big bearskin spread over it, the boy prepared to keep his vigil. But alas! for the best determination of man and boy. It grew very still in the hut. Far up on the hillside came the monotonous tap-tap of the old man's hoe. Insects buzzed drowsily in the warm afternoonair. The whole world seemed in a conspiracy to put the tired boy to sleep.
Once Jack caught himself nodding, he awoke with an angry start at his own neglectfulness. A second time the same thing occurred, but this time his start was not quite so abrupt. Presently his deep regular breathing was added to the sonorous snores of Coyote Pete.
Not long afterward, the worker in the corn-patch dropped his hoe and started down the hill-side toward the hut. A malevolent smile flitted across his apelike features as he heard Pete's snores. Approaching the hut from the back, the hermit cautiously raised himself, till his wild face was peering into a small, unglazed window. His grin grew wider as he noted Jack's slumber-stilled form. Then he dropped from the window and walked rapidly away.
How much later it was that Jack awakened, he did not know. All that he was aware of was that the hut seemed singularly dark, and that the fire on the hermit's hearth was out. The cause of the darkness soon became apparent. The door of the place was shut.
Jack hastened across the floor to open it. To his consternation, it resisted his stoutest efforts. It had been barred on the outside. The window through which the hermit had peered was little more than a hole, and too small to permit egress of either his own or Pete's body.
Hastily the boy awoke Pete, who at once began blaming himself bitterly for being the cause of the catastrophe. There was small doubt in the minds of either that the old hermit had locked them in; though for what purpose they could not, at the moment, imagine.
"We'll have to break the door down," said Pete as he hastily rose, brushing the sleep out of his eyes.
He gave the door a terrific shake, but it did not tremble. It was stronger than they had supposed. Pete, mustering every ounce of strength in his muscular body, crouched himself half across the room, and then with a terrific rush tried to break it down with his shoulder.
Still it did not budge.
For the second time in twenty-four hours the fugitives were prisoners.