The Border Boys on the Trail

"You think you can find it again?" asked Jack, fascinated by the old prospector's strange story.

"Why, I dunno, son. You see, I was in such a hurry to get away when I heard them fellers coming, that I just stuffed it in a crack in the wall. If they got inquisitive they could easy get it out, but they wouldn't suspect nothing, for the book looked blank."

"But how did you escape without their seeing you?"

"Ah, you've got to trust an old borderer for that," grinned Jim Hicks. "You see, when I got near the church, thinks I to myself, 'now, Jim Hicks, you don't want to burn your bridges behind you' so I just left my pony hidden in a little arroyo about half a mile away. When I heard them coming by the front of the place, I slipped out the other side and into the brush. After a lot of wrigging about through the scrub, I reached my pony, and rode back up here to where I had my outfit cached."

"Then you don't know whether there's treasure there or not?" asked Jack.

"Wa'al, there's treasure there all right, no doubt o' that. That Spanish fellow – I told you how I helped him when he was dying – swore he didn't lie to me, and I believe him. But he hinted at there being some sort of difficulty in the way of getting at it. The breath of death, I think he called it. Guess he meant the greasers' garlic."

"I guess so," responded Jack; "how I wish that we could go with you right now and explore the secret tunnel."

"Wa'al, we've got to get in communication with the ranch first, and then we can get the greaser troops and get after that band of scallywags," said Pete.

"And we must be two days' ride from it now," sighed Jack. "In the meantime, what will be happening to the others?"

"That's the trouble," mused Pete, "if only we'd had a chance, we might have struck out and got the troops ourselves. But the greasers cut us off, and we're of more use here, even as out of the way as we are, than we would be in Black Ramon's clutches."

"Tell yer what," exclaimed Jim Hicks suddenly, "you don't hev ter ride all ther way to ther ranch."

"What's that?" asked Pete.

"No. I mean what I say. Use the telephone."

"What?"

Jack and Pete looked at the eccentric prospector as if they thought he had gone crazy in good earnest.

"Oh, I'm not locoed. Has your father got talk bo' at the ranch, boy?"

"Yes," rejoined Jack.

"Then it's easy."

The prospector spoke with such easy confidence that, in spite of themselves, Jack and Pete began to pay serious attention to his words.

"Oh, yes; I suppose we jes' climb a sugar-pine and asked Central ter give us Grizzly one twenty-three?" inquired Pete, sardonically.

"Nope," rejoined the miner, quite unruffled; "but hain't yer never thought that there's a telephone at the big water dam?"

"Thunders of Vesuvius, that's right!" exclaimed Pete, leaping to his feet and executing a jig.

"How do we get there, though?" asked Jack. "We must be miles from it."

"Not so very far. I know a trail across the mountain that'll get us there a whole lot sooner than you'd think possible."

"Oh-didy-dd diddy-dum; Dum-dididdy-dee!" hummed Pete cutting all sorts of capers, "oh, now won't we get after those greasers."

"When can we start?" asked Jack.

"Sun up to-morrow."

"Good. I won't rest easy till I know that we're on the way to save Ralph and the others."

CHAPTER XX.

RALPH A TRUE HERO

"Ralph!"

The voice sounded in the boy's ears like the chiming of a far-away bell. Lying prone on the floor of the tunnel, overcome by the foul gases, he had been unconscious, he did not know for how long, when he felt his shoulders roughly shaken and Walt Phelps' voice in his ear.

His head ached terribly, and he felt weak and dizzy, but he struggled to reply.

"Oh, Walt, what is it? What has happened?"

"Why, we've all been knocked out, I guess," said Walt; "but the gas must be escaping, now, for although my head still feels as if a boiler factory was at work in it, I can think and feel."

The professor's voice now struck in as he recovered consciousness.

"Boys!" he exclaimed. "Are you there?"

"Yes, yes, professor; do you feel strong enough to move?"

"I think so. It is important that we should get out of here at once. I imagine that the gas must have become so distributed by this time that it has lost its harmful effect, but we must get to the open air."

"I agree with you," chimed in Ralph.

"What, Ralph, my boy, you here?" exclaimed the professor. "Why, you were far in advance. How do you come to be with us now?"

As modestly as he could, Ralph related how he had turned back into the black tunnel.

"That was bravely done, bravely done, my boy," exclaimed the professor warmly.

Even in the darkness Ralph colored with pleasure, as Walt added his praise to the scientist's.

Soon after they started for the entrance of the tunnel once more, Ralph having told them of his discovery of the shaft.

"Possibly there are steps cut in it. Let us hope so," said the professor. "If there are not, we shall be as badly off as before, for we cannot get back through the tunnel."

"No," said Ralph with a shudder, "I would not face the horrors of the place again for a whole lot."

A careful investigation of the shaft soon revealed, to their great joy, that a flight of steps had indeed been cut in it, doubtless to enable the old Mission dwellers to ascend and descend from the surface of the earth when they desired.

"The question now is," said the professor suddenly, "where are we? On what sort of ground will these steps lead us out?"

"Give it up," said Walt. "I should judge, though, we must have come a mile or more through the tunnel."