The Border Boys on the Trail

"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 the well, 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 gripped Jack'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 reckon this 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 hunting his 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.

CHAPTER XII.

A RIDE FOR THE HILLS

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."