The Border Boys on the Trail

"Sold!" ejaculated Ralph. Walt Phelps did not speak, but his disappointment was keen.

The professor said nothing, but thought deeply, for a few minutes. Then he spoke.

"I have it," he exclaimed suddenly, "it's we that have been wrong, and not the book."

"What do you mean?" asked Ralph, "we followed directions. I memorized them carefully myself."

"Yes, my boy, we did, but if you recollect the book said nothing about the color of the squares. We counted on the black ones, assuming that to be correct. Now might it not just as well have been the white ones that the directions meant?"

"That's so," agreed Ralph eagerly, with new hope; "let's try it that way."

"We'll have to be quick. It will be dark as pitch in a few minutes," said Walt.

Once more the three bent over the floor and counted carefully, this time using the white tiles as counters. Their enumeration brought them to another old brass rail, standing upright in what had once been the chancel of the old church.

Not one of that party drew a breath, as in the dying light the professor laid his hand on the upright pillar and pulled.

"Fooled again," burst out Ralph; but suddenly the professor, who had put his utmost strength into the task, went toppling backward, waving his arms like a scarecrow in a high gale. He fell on the marble floor with a crash, but was up again like a jack-in-the-box.

"Hooray! hooray! the old miner's writing was true!" burst out Ralph.

"Hush!" exclaimed Walt, "you'll have Ramon and his men in here in a moment."

As he spoke there came a sudden trampling of feet outside and shouts echoed.

"They've found us out!" gasped Ralph, with blanched cheeks.

"No, they're running past the door," exclaimed Walt. "Listen, something else is the matter."

"What can it be?" wondered Jack.

"No time for speculation now, my boy," warned the professor, who had recovered himself. "It's now or never. Are we going to chance the secret tunnel?"

"Yes," chorused both boys, gazing without hesitation into the black square which the swinging back of the rail had revealed. From the mouth of the dark pit a fetid, foul-smelling air rushed upward. It was the breath of the dead centuries.

"One moment," said the professor, staying Ralph as he was about to plunge forward undismayed into the abyss; "let some of that deadly gas out."

In apprehension of momentary discovery, the adventurers waited, starting at every sound. Outside the disturbance still went on. Feet could be heard rushing hither and thither. What could be happening?

"Now!" said the professor, after a few breathless minutes had passed.

Led by Ralph, they plunged downward, their feet encountering a flight of steps.

As they vanished into the unknown, the trap-door, actuated by some hidden machinery, which must have acted as their weight came on the long disused steps, swung silently back into place.

At the same instant there were several loud shouts from without, followed by a fusillade of rifles.

The escape of Jack and Pete from the tower had just been discovered, and while the ranch boy and the cow-puncher were surrounded by the perils through which we have followed them, the other members of the beleaguered party made their way forward into a blackness so utter as to feel almost solid.

CHAPTER XVI.

SHORT RATIONS

As soon as it grew daylight next morning the two fugitives, Jack Merrill and Coyote Pete, not to forget the one-eared mule, from the effects of whose stampede Pete was still limping, made a careful reconnaissance. From their lofty perch on a ledge of rock far up the cañon they could see behind them a thin thread of distant blue smoke, which still marked the scene of the destruction of the treacherous old hermit's hut.

A few bluejays hopped about here and there, eying the intruders inquisitively, a badger rushed grunting and grumbling through some nearby scrub. Otherwise the cañon, under a blinding blue sky, was still as a desert noon.

"Wa'al, all's quiet along the Potomac from the looks of things," commented Pete, "and now let's get down to the creek, and I'll wash off some of the dirt that one-eared Maud there plastered me with last night, and then we'll hit up that pocket chuck-wagon of yours."

"And after that?" asked Jack.

"Why, then, we'll keep right on going. Let's see, it was to-day that you was to have written home for money, wasn't it?"

"Yes," said Jack, with a sigh, thinking of Ralph, who, if he had only known it, was at that moment beyond Black Ramon's reach.

"Wa'al, now, if that Easterner can only stick out, we'll win home yet," gritted out Pete, "and be back with help by day after to-morrow."

"Now, then, you one-eared, cock-eyed imp of Satan, if you want a morning drink quit pulling back on that halter and come down to the creek," went on the cow-puncher, addressing the mule, which by common consent had been christened Maud.

The mule flopped her one ear wisely at Pete, and docilely allowed herself to be led to water. Both travelers drank and laved themselves, and then seated on a rock at the edge of the watercourse made a meal off the remnants of Jack's stock.

"Last of the grub, eh?" inquired Pete, as the final morsels vanished.

Jack nodded.

"Well, we'll have to tighten our belts a few notches then, I reckon," was all Pete said. It took more than the prospect of a little hunger ahead to alarm the old plainsman.

All at once his eyes fell on an object lying some distance up the creek. It reposed on the flat top of a rock and seemed to be a shallow metal basin of some sort.

"Hello!" exclaimed Pete, as he sighted it, "there's a clew to our neighbor of last night – the one who dug out so unsociable when Maud began cutting up."

"Cutting you up, I guess you mean," laughed Jack, gazing at Pete's scratched countenance, and a further facial decoration he carried in the shape of a big goose egg over one eye.

"Hum, I guess my style of beauty has been considerably damaged," grinned Pete, "and look at that one-eared demon will you, grinning at us as if she enjoyed it."

They both had to burst out laughing, forgetting their other troubles at the queer sidelong glance Maud bestowed on them. It was as if she said:

"Didn't I have a lark last night?"

"Say, Jack," said Pete suddenly, after an interval of looking about to see if any chance crumbs had been overlooked, "I'm going to have a look at that thing on the rock up there. It may give us a clew to our friend who lit out so unpremeditated."

"That washbowl, you mean?" asked Jack.

"Well, it ain't exactly a wash bowl. It's what prospectors use to wash out gold in. They take a handful of mud and some water from any creek they think looks good, and then they wash it about. Of course, the gold, being heaviest, sinks to the bottom and stays there after all the other stuff has been washed away."

An examination of the basin showed that it was an old one and much battered. On one side it bore scratched deep in its surface the initials J. H.

"Feller had quite a camp here," said Pete, looking about him. "Funny we didn't sight him when we first came up. Must have had three ponies, two to pack and one to ride."