The Border Boys on the Trail

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 cultivated behind 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 end of 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 afternoon air. 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.

CHAPTER XIV.

TRAVELS WITH A MULE

"Well, was I right?"

"Oh, say, don't rub it in, Jack. Of course you were. I was a fool to have gone to sleep, but – "

"Never mind reproaching yourself now, Pete," said Jack soberly. "The thing to do is to get out of here as quick as possible."

"Yes, we've no time to lose," said Pete, a serious look coming over his ordinarily cheerful countenance.

Jack caught a more serious meaning underlying the words than they seemed to hold in themselves.

"I should say so," he rejoined. "We've got to catch that old ruffian and give him the thrashing of his life. The idea of shutting us in here. I thought he was crazy, and now I know it."

"Not so crazy as you think, Jack," replied Pete gravely. "I'm afraid he's got more sense than we gave him credit for, and that right now we are in more serious danger than at any time since we escaped."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind now. I don't want to scare you to death without there being any necessity for it. What I want to impress on you is that there is no time to lose."

"Of course, I appreciate that," rejoined Jack, not quite making out what Pete meant, but thinking it wiser to abstain from asking questions at the moment, "but how are we to get out?"

"Dunno right now," said Pete, scratching his head abstractedly.

"I have it," cried Jack suddenly. "We'll burn the door down."

"What about matches?"

"There are still some embers on the hearth there, and a pile of brush beside it. I'm sure we can do it."

"Well, let's get to work, then," said Pete, who seemed strangely ill at ease.

A goodly pile of brush was soon piled against the rough door and ignited by means of taking an ember from the fire and blowing on it till it burst into flame. Up roared the flames, the timber fire crackling against the stone roof and filling the hut with a choking smoke. Luckily, most of this escaped by the window, or they might have run a good chance of being suffocated.

"Say, it'll take a year to burn through the door at this rate," choked out Jack, after fifteen minutes or so of this.

"It would if we were going to burn through it, but we ain't," chuckled Pete. "Let the fire burn down now – or, better still, there's some water in that jar; just throw it over the blaze."

This being done, the fire soon died out, and then Pete, wresting one of the heavy loose stones from the hearth, battered with all his might against the charred wood. It took a long time, but at last a chink of daylight appeared.

"Hooray!" shouted Jack, as they attacked it with a piece of iron found near the cooking-hearth. Soon quite a hole appeared, and Pete, reaching through, encountered a heavy wooden bar leaned against the door from the outside, placed to hold it firmly closed. It was the work of but a few seconds to dislodge this and emerge into the open air.

Their work, however, had taken so much time that it was dusk when they stepped out of the door. Without a word, Pete, as if he had gone suddenly mad, darted off toward the old hermit's stable. He emerged in a second with an angry cry on his lips.

"Just as I thought," he exclaimed, "they're gone!"