The Border Boys on the Trail

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.

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 below them. 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.

CHAPTER XI.

A DROP IN THE DARK

"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 muttered prayer, 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 up Pete, 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 of the 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 of tin buckets and pails which had been placed there that day. A bull running amuck in a tin shop could hardly have made more noise.