The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers

CHAPTER IV

A BATTLE ROYAL

Jack struggled to his feet and surveyed the scene of his disaster with dismay. A brief examination of his fallen horse told him that it would be impossible to continue his flight on the animal. Its knees were cut and bruised, and it lay with an expression of dumb suffering in its eyes that touched the sorely-tried lad’s heart. If he had not dropped his little rifle in the excitement of his escape he would have despatched the creature, – risking the chance of detection from the sound of the report.

“Well, here’s where I take to Shank’s mare,” murmured Jack, setting off once more, – when something whistled through the air and settled about his neck in a stifling coil.

It was a rawhide lasso, hurled with deadly accuracy by Ramon, who had entered the glade just as Jack arose from his examination of the fallen horse.

Before the boy had time to realize what had occurred, he was yanked from his feet and thrown violently to the ground for the second time.

“So I’ve got you fast and tight, at last, eh,” sneered Ramon vindictively, gazing down from his great horse at the crestfallen, dust-covered boy.

“Well, my young senor,” he continued, with a vicious intonation, “I can promise you that this time you will not escape so easily. This will be a treat for the boys.”

Jack answered nothing. He struggled to rise but the rope was given a jerk by his captor which brought him to the ground once more. He could almost have cried with humiliation. At the moment this was his overmastering feeling. Of fear he felt little, but he would have given a lot just then to stand up with Black Ramon in a twenty-four-foot ring!

Having “thrown” poor Jack very much as he might have done a refractory calf, the outlaw turned his attention to the injured horse.

“So you have ruined one of our horses, too, you Yankee pig,” he snarled; “well, it only makes one more score to settle up with you.”

He drew one of his big revolvers from its chased leather holster, and carefully aiming it, shot the mortally injured animal between the eyes. The creature gave a convulsive shudder and straightened out, – dead. Without another word Ramon swung his black around, and before he could make a move Jack found himself being dragged over the rough ground at a swift pace. Within a few yards his side was bruised and cut, and the clothing torn from him.

“Great heavens, if this keeps up I shall be unable to move hand or foot,” thought Jack in dismay.

For a moment his heart failed him, and then he suddenly bethought himself of his knife. To reach it in his side pocket – for his arms were partially free, – was the work of an instant, and with one quick slash he cut the rawhide that bound him.

Released of its burden thus suddenly, the sure-footed black lost its footing and almost stumbled.

“Diablo!” Jack heard Ramon shrill out as the Border Boy gave one quick leap into the dense woods.

When Ramon looked around there was not a trace of the lad he had had at the end of his lariat. Instead, a broken end of the rope dangled on the ground, its ends frayed out.

“Maledictions!” he yelled, all the fury of his Latin blood boiling to the surface in an ungovernable flood. “That cursed gringo pup has fooled me once more.”

In one of those meaningless frenzies of rage into which his countrymen are apt to fall when thwarted in anything, Ramon began to vent his rage on the first animate object to hand. This was the black horse. On the beautiful creature’s shiny coat the cruel blows of the Mexican’s lariat fell furiously, raising great welts across the glossy surface.

For an instant the black quivered and stood motionless. The suddenness of the attack dazed it. But the next moment, its rage, – as ungoverned as that of its master, surged up in its equine heart. With an angry squeal it gave a succession of huge bucks which would have unseated any ordinary – or extraordinary rider, – but which did not even disturb the Mexican’s seat.

Then followed a magnificent exhibition of man versus horse. And it was not without its watchers – this Homeric struggle for supremacy between maddened man and maddened beast.

Jack, from his hiding place in the ferns and brush, heard the sounds and almost unconsciously he drew closer to the scene of the combat. Parting the ferns he peered through cautiously, and then was held spellbound.

If he were to have been captured for it the next instant he could not have withdrawn his gaze from the spectacle.

With clenched teeth and face that was yellow and drawn with rage, Ramon plied quirt and spur. The big rowelled instruments he wore tore great streaks in the black’s glossy hide. All the time his quirt fell in a perfect hailstorm of blows about the noble animal’s flanks.

But if Ramon’s rage was impressive from its very vindictiveness, how much more so was the just anger of the big horse.

Its delicately pointed ears were pressed close back to its shapely head, while its eye gleamed whitely. As the big silver-mounted bit of the barbarous Mexican pattern cut and gored its sensitive mouth, the animal champed and snapped, – like a rabid dog, – till its great chest was flecked with blood and foam. But it was unsubdued, as unconquered as its master.

“By George, what a rider!” was the involuntary exclamation of admiration forced from Jack as he watched.

And the next moment.

“Gracious, what a horse!”

Suddenly the black reared straight upward, beating the air with its forelegs. For a breath it swayed and balanced perfectly, and then, losing its equilibrium – perhaps purposely – it fell backward.

A cry of alarm broke, against his will, from Jack’s whitened lips. Ramon’s death seemed certain. But instead of the black crushing his body in its fall, the agile Mexican was out of the saddle with the agility of an eel, and as the black leaped erect once more its master was back in the saddle breathing fresh maledictions and flogging and rowelling more unmercifully than ever.

But from that time on, there was no question but that the animal realized that it had met its match. Its bucks were no longer great, animated, splendid leaps, driven by the force of its powerful muscles. Instead, they were limp and dispirited.

But Ramon seemed bent on thoroughly humiliating the animal. Jack’s blood began to boil as he saw the brutal punishment increasing in violence as the black grew more and more subjugated. Its sunken flanks heaved, its limbs trembled and actual tears rolled down its cheeks; but Ramon still flogged and beat and spurred as furiously as ever.

“Oh, that such a rider should be such a brute!” thought Jack, watching the scene from his place of concealment.

“This has got to stop,” he determined the next instant. So great was his anger at the brutal exhibition that had he had his small rifle he would almost have risked crippling one of the Mexican’s arms or legs in order to end the sickening brutality.

But if Jack had not a rifle, he had another weapon perhaps even more efficacious in his hands. It will be recalled that Jack had performed some remarkable feats of pitching at Stonefell College, notably in the great game between West Point and Stonefell. What more natural then than that he should select from the plenty about him, a small, well-rounded stone, somewhat smaller than a league ball.

Feeling sure that Ramon was too intent on his punishment to notice anything else, Jack stepped boldly to the edge of the little clearing, and with a preliminary twist he sent the stone hurtling straight and true at the head of the black’s tormentor.

Like a tree that has felt the woodsman’s axe, Ramon threw up his hands as the stone struck him, and without a sound pitched out of the saddle, crashing in a heap on the ground.

Jack felt rather alarmed as he saw this. He had not intended to throw quite so hard. For an instant a dreadful fear that he had killed Ramon – rascal though the man was, – clutched at his heart.

Coming boldly out from his place of concealment he hastened to the fallen man’s side.

CHAPTER V

CAUGHT IN A TRAP

But Ramon was not dead, – far from it, in fact. As Jack bent above him he reached back, and with a swift, cat-like motion, whipped out a knife and, balancing it on his palm for the fraction of a second, sent it whistling past the lad’s ear.

Before he could rise the boy was upon him, and for a space of several minutes they struggled on the uneven ground, the exhausted horse looking disinterestedly on. Had it not been for its recent punishment it is likely that the brute might have interfered, for some of the oft told tales along the border concerned the black’s love for its master. But as it was, it made no move, not even when Jack, holding Ramon pinned to the ground with one hand, with the other jerked loose the lasso from the saddle, by its hanging end, and rapidly proceeded to bind the Mexican fast.

“Adios, Ramon!” cried the boy, as, his task completed, he turned away.

Had the black horse not been so completely worn out it is likely that Jack might have commandeered him. But as it was, he deemed it wisest not to bother with him.

And so he slipped away, leaving the exhausted horse and helpless master side by side.

After traveling some distance Jack began to realize that his woodcraft was seriously at fault somewhere. He had intended to make a detour which would bring him around the outlaw’s camp and enable him to reach their own bivouac unobserved.

Instead of this, as he now began to dread, he had apparently headed altogether in the wrong direction, for the country into which he emerged after traversing the fern-brake and scrub-coppice, was of a kind distinctly foreign to anything they had as yet encountered in Mexico.

Almost bare of vegetation, it was riven and split as if by volcanic action. The earth was of a reddish color, as if it had been seared by elemental fires, and the beetling cliffs rose threateningly on either side.

“What a gloomy place,” thought Jack, “it reminds me of that valley in which Sinbad the Sailor found the snakes and the diamonds. Wonder if there are any diamonds here? Tell you what, though, I’d give a whole handful of the gems right now for a good square meal.”

The thought of the appetizing breakfast which had been preparing when he left camp made Jack hungrier than ever, a fact which he had not had time heretofore to realize in the rapid march of events which had occurred since his departure.

The Border Boy looked about him carefully. He realized that if not actually lost, he was in grave danger of being so. The thought quickened his faculties and he set about gauging his position in real earnest. Having, by the aid of the sun, calculated the direction in which the Border Boys’ camp ought to lie, Jack struck out for it. His way led him across a corner of The Baked Land, as he had mentally christened the dreary valley.

He was hastening forward when, suddenly, as he stepped into what seemed a patch of ferns and high grass, the solid ground seemed to vanish from under his feet.

Straight down shot the Border Boy, clutching desperately, as he fell, at projecting rocks and bits of growth; but none of these remained firm in his grasp.

For twenty feet or more the boy fell, and then suddenly his drop was arrested by a heap of dried vegetation at the bottom of the pit or crevasse into which his hurrying feet had led him.

So well had the deceitful growth on the edges of this gulf hidden it, that it was small wonder that Jack, in his haste, had not perceived it. It was dark with a gloomy, damp sort of dusk in the bottom of the crevasse, only a dim, greenish light filtering in from the top.

The reaction from his hopes of a few minutes before almost unnerved the lad for the nonce, but presently he marshalled his faculties and set himself to the task of ascertaining exactly what had happened to him, and what means of escape presented itself.

At a single glance he could see that there was no hope of getting out of the subterranean trap by means of climbing up the walls. Although they were rough and might have afforded a foothold, they overhung the floor of the pit at such an angle that even a fly would have found it difficult to maintain a foothold on them.

Yet rescue himself he must, or face death in that gloomy place. Without any definite idea in his mind, Jack struck off along the bottom of the abyss, which was overgrown with a short, coarse sort of grass of a pallid green color.

As he moved along his progress was suddenly arrested. His foot had encountered something that wriggled and squirmed horribly under his sole. It was a sickening sensation, this, of feeling that squirmy mass under his foot.

Jack stepped hastily back. As he did so something brown and mottled slid off through the grass, hissing angrily. As it went there came a dry sort of sound, like the rattling of peas in a bladder. At the same time a nauseating musky odor filled the air.

“This place may be alive with rattlers!” thought Jack, glancing nervously about him.

As he spoke he thought that from a dark corner at the further end of the rocky pit he could hear a sort of scuffling and rustling, unpleasantly suggestive of intertwined masses of scaly bodies writhing and contorting in snaky knots. At any rate, he decided to explore the rift no further in that direction. Instead, he turned back and sitting down on a projecting bit of rock, – after first carefully reviewing the surroundings, – Jack set himself to some hard thinking.

If only he had possessed a rifle or a revolver, – or even a knife, – his situation would have been different. By firing the weapons he might have attracted attention to his dilemma, and with the knife it might have been feasible to cut steps in the walls at some other part of the crevasse.

Then, too, there is something in the mere feel of the good wood and steel of a rifle that gives a fellow confidence and courage. It seems like a friend or at least a protector. But poor Jack had none of this comfort He was trapped in the bowels of the earth with only his bare hands to aid him out of his difficulties.

As it was unthinkable to dream of exploring the pit further in the direction in which he felt sure lay the den of snakes, Jack finally decided on striking off the other way. That he went carefully, you may be sure. He did not want again to experience that wriggly, crawly feeling under his foot.

The crevasse seemed to be of considerable length. In fact, he estimated that he had walked some half mile or more before he reached what seemed to be its confines. It ended abruptly in a steep wall of rock, and with its termination Jack’s hopes of escape vanished also. Fairly unnerved, the boy sank down on a heap of dried fern and buried his face in his hands.

Was he to be buried alive in this horrible place?

Then he fell to shouting. He yelled and hulloed till his throat was dry and sore, and his lips cracked. He knew that he ran considerable risk of attracting the attention of the outlaws, but in his present predicament he didn’t much care what happened so long as he got out of the terrible place. But all his shouting came to naught, and after an interval of waiting Jack realized that it had all been in vain.

What was he to do next? Nothing but to wait for rescue or – But Jack would not allow himself to complete the sentence.

“While there is life there is hope,” he murmured to himself, and involuntarily recalled the night when he had stood upon the tower of the old mission, a hundred feet above the ground, and deemed that his end had come. Yet he had escaped from that dilemma, and more impossible things had happened than that he should get out of his present scrape alive.

All at once, while he sat thus meditating, the boy spied, not far above his head and only a short distance away, a dangling vine some two inches in circumference, and seemingly tough and fibrous.

“It ought to bear my weight,” thought Jack, “and if only it will, I’ll get out of this hideous place yet.”

He began making brave efforts to reach the trailing tendon. Time and again, with hands that were cut and bleeding from the rough surface of the rock, he was compelled to desist in his efforts, but at last, mustering his waning strength, he made a mighty leap. His fingers closed on the vine and he drew himself upward. But as the boy’s full weight came upon the green trailer it snapped abruptly, and Jack was thrown violently to the ground.

He fell with such force that he was stunned and helpless. Clasping the broken bit of treacherous vine in his hands, the Border Boy lay on the floor of the crevasse, senseless.

CHAPTER VI

AN EXCITING QUEST

In the meantime, the keenest anxiety prevailed in the camp. After awaiting breakfast for a long time, it was at last eaten and the tin dishes scoured, without there being any sign of the missing boy.

“We must organize a search at once,” declared the professor. “Following on the top of that warning last night, it begins to look ominous.”

“Maybe he has lost himself, and will find his way back before long,” suggested Ralph hopefully.

Coyote Pete gloomily shook his head.

“Jack Merrill ain’t that kind,” he said; “I tell yer, I don’t like the looks of it.”

“Why not fire guns so that if he is in the vicinity he can hear them?” was Walt Phelps’ suggestion.

“Yep, and bring the whole hornets’ nest down on our ears, provided they are anywhar near,” grunted Coyote Pete. “No younker, we will have to think up a better way than that.”

“Would not the search party I suggested be the best plan?” put in the professor.

“Reckon it would,” agreed Coyote Pete; “what you kain’t find, look fur, – as the flea said to ther monkey.”

But nobody laughed, as they usually did, at Pete’s quaintly phrased observations. There was too much anxiety felt by them all over Jack’s unexplained absence.

“Shall we take the horses?” inquired Walt.

“Sartin, sure,” was the cow-puncher’s rejoinder, “don’t want ter leave ’em here for that letter writer and his pals to gobble up.”

So the stock was saddled and the pack burros loaded and “diamond hitched,” and the mournful and anxious little party got under way. It so chanced that their way led them to the little hill where Jack had stopped on the stolen horse and listened for sounds of the pursuit. Coyote’s sharp eyes at once spied the tracks, but naturally he could make nothing of them.

Suddenly Ralph Stetson, who had ridden a little in advance, gave a startled cry.

“Come here, all!” he shouted.

“What’s up now?” grunted Coyote Pete, spurring forward, followed by the others.

“Why, here’s a horse, – a dead horse, shot through the head, lying here,” was the unexpected reply.

“Well, Mr. Coyote, what do you make of it?” asked the professor, after Pete had carefully surveyed the ground in the vicinity.

“Dunno what ter make uv it yit,” snorted Pete. “Looks like ther’s something back of this, as the cat said when she looked in the mirror, and – wow!”