The Border Boys on the Trail

The pass beyond the bridge was empty of life.

Of their friends there was not a trace.

A terrible feeling that the worst had happened filled every heart.

"Come on, boys, we'll get 'em if we have to go to Mexico City for 'em," yelled Bud defiantly. "Wow!"

"That's the stuff – wow!" yelled the others.

With his exultant cry still in his throat, and his arm still waving, Bud drove in his spurs. He was about to dash upon the bridge, when suddenly the structure heaved upward before his eyes and the whole world seemed to turn to red flame. A fiery wind singed his face.

There was a roar that filled the air, the sky – everything. The earth rocked and breathed hotly under the cow-pony's feet. Bud felt his broncho suddenly fall from under him and himself dropping like a stone into space. Desperately he clutched, grasped something solid, and drew himself up. Then, everything went out from his senses and the whole world grew dark.

CHAPTER VII.

IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY

"What happened, Bud?"

Mr. Merrill, stanching a wound in his head with his hand, sat upright on the edge of the dark gorge across which a few moments before there had been a bridge. Now there was none. Only sullen wisps of yellowish smoke curling upward and a strong, acrid smell in the air.

Sheer below the rancher, the naked rocks shot down, bare of foothold. Deep down at the bottom rushed the river which carried water from the land company's dam down to the valley. The dam lay up the cañon to the west.

Bud Wilson was crawling about dazedly on his hands and knees. All about were plunging horses and rock-wounded men. The still stupefied Bud looked up as the rancher impatiently repeated his question.

"Dynamite!– the yellow-skinned reptiles," he growled, "and if that charge had been touched off right we should all have been at the bottom of that gorge with my poor horse."

He gazed over the ragged, explosive-riven edge, and shuddered, as far below him he sighted a dark mass lying among the brush and trees at the bottom of the gulch.

"Yes, it was dynamite beyond a doubt," agreed the rancher; "but how did we escape the dreadful fate they had prepared for us?"

Bud Wilson shrugged his shoulders.

"I reckon the feller they left to press the button got rattled and touched it off too soon," he rejoined. "They're a jumpy lot, these greasers."

"Thank Heaven that none of us is seriously hurt," said Mr. Merrill, looking about him. "I do not believe that any one has suffered more than a few cuts from flying rocks."

This proved to be the case. The escape of the party when the bridge had been blown up had indeed been miraculous.

"Why should they have delayed to set off the charge till we came back? Why not have set it off when we were all on the bridge, before we wheeled round to discover the origin of the shots on the hillside?" asked Mr. Merrill.

"Well, boss, it looks this way to me," said Bud, after a period of deep thought. "Them fellows had the trap all set and calculated that when we heard the firing we should stop and hesitate – as we did. Well, that, I take it, was the time that that charge should have been touched off, but somehow connections missed. We weren't on the bridge. That fellow with the rifle fired too quick. Then, too, them boys and Pete taking off after that treacherous varmint wasn't calculated on by them, in all probability, and what with one thing and another they missed their guess on the first charge."

"And on the second, too, by Christmas!" chimed in Ellis. "There ain't a pony missin' but the one you rode, Bud, and there ain't a man of us hurt; even that greaser you had on your saddle-bow got bucked off when your pony was blown over the edge."

"By the great horn spoon, that's right," said Bud, walking over to where the wounded Mexican lay.

"Still unconscious," he said, after a brief examination. "If only he could talk, boss," the cow-puncher added whimsically.

"That would do us no good, Bud," rejoined Mr. Merrill. "It would give us no clue to the fate of my poor boy and the others."

"Wouldn't it, boss?" echoed Bud. "Wa'al, in my opinion this saffron coyote here deserves careful keeping for future reference, for I believe he holds the key to the whole mystery."

"Heaven grant he does," breathed Mr. Merrill, his heart sinking as he thought of the possible destiny of Jack and his friends. "Without his aid I don't see what we are to do."

"Well," said Bud cheerfully, "ain't no good worryin'. We'll get 'em out of it all right, never fear, boss."

"Thanks, Bud, I hope we will," said Mr. Merrill, bravely putting his anxiety from him as best he could. "But the thing to do now is to find a safe place to camp for the night. We should not be overtaken by darkness in such a trap as this."

"I guess there's not much danger of an attack now," said Bud bitterly. "I wish there was. I'd give a new saddle for a crack at one of them greasers."

Soon afterward, with Bud riding double behind Ellis, and Mr. Merrill's saddle bearing the wounded Mexican, the sorrowful party began the journey back down the cañon. With every sense and muscle aching for action, they were compelled to await the decision of time. The clew to the attack, and the whereabouts of Black Ramon and his gang, lay in the hands of one man, and that man was unable to speak. No wonder that as they rode, the thought in Mr. Merrill's mind was to get medical attendance for their wounded foe as soon as possible, and in the meantime give him the best of care.

As Bud had said, he might be valuable for future reference.

As their ponies' hoofs hammered over the rough bridge the Border Boys' minds had burned with but one thought. They must capture the treacherous guide who, it appeared only too evidently, had led them into a trap. As their mounts flew by a dense brush mass on the rocks at the farther side of the precipitous gorge, they had glimpsed for a second a crouching figure. But such was their wish to catch up with the treacherous Jose that they paid the figure no attention. Yet had they done so, they might have prevented the destruction of the bridge. The crouching man was one of Black Ramon's followers, and in the brush was concealed the battery from which led the wires which were to blow up the bridge.

"I'd give a new lariat right now to have my fingers on that sneaking coyote's throat," gritted out Walt Phelps, as the ponies loped swiftly along.

A little ahead of the Border Boys, rode the large, angular figure of Coyote Pete, bestriding his big, raw-boned bay with the careless ease of the old plainsman. The ends of his scarlet handkerchief whipped out behind his neck, and he gnawed his long, straw-colored mustache nervously as he kept his keen, blue eyes, with a maze of little desert furrows round them, centred on the crouching figure of the Mexican ahead. The professor having by this time checked his horse and recovered his equilibrium, gazed about as eagerly as the rest.

The treacherous Jose, however, seemed to have a good mount, for even Coyote Pete's powerful bay, and the active little ponies bestrode by the boys, failed to draw up on him even after a mile of fast riding.

"That horse-stealing son of a rattlesnake has a good bit of horse flesh there," grunted the cowboy, turning in his saddle without slackening speed.

"Say," said Walt, "we've come quite a distance, Pete, and there is no sign of the others. Don't you think it would be a good idea to turn back and see what has become of them?"

"Don't know but what it might," answered Pete, reining in his horse till it was going ahead at a gentle, "single-footed" trot. He gave his mustache a perplexed tug and an apprehensive look came into his eyes.

"What's the trouble, Pete?" asked Jack.

"Why, I was just thinking that we've come too far as it is," rejoined the plainsman in a worried tone. "If any of Ramon's men are sneaking around here now they've got us in a fine trap."

He pointed down the trail. A backward view of the way they had come was cut off by a projecting promontory of rock. For anything they knew to the contrary, the trail behind them might be full of Mexicans, ready to capture them.

"We're in a bad place for sure," agreed Walt Phelps, shoving back his sombrero and scratching his red thatch. "Let's be getting back. There's no chance of catching that miserable Jose now, anyway."

"Yes, let's get back," agreed Ralph, who was beginning to feel anything but easy in his mind.

They wheeled their wiry little horses and Pete swung his big bay. As they faced about, a simultaneous exclamation of astonishment broke from each one of the party.

From behind the projection of rock there had suddenly appeared five figures. Slightly in advance of the others rode a tall man on a magnificent black horse, whom the party from the foothills, with the exception of the professor, had no difficulty in recognizing as Black Ramon himself.

With a quick exclamation, Pete reached for his revolvers, but Ramon checked him with an eloquent wave of his hand behind him. Each of his followers held a rifle, and these weapons covered the Border Boys and their older companions.

"Another move like that, Señor Pete," said Black Ramon, "and four of your party are food for the buzzards. I myself will attend to the fifth."

While Pete hesitated, the ruffian from across the border whipped out a silver-mounted pistol from his sash and held it leveled, while a somber smile flitted across his countenance.