The Border Boys on the Trail

The words were jerked out of Ralph's mouth, as Petticoats plunged and reared and gave a succession of stiff-legged bucks.

Jack had no time to reply before the buckskin, with a squeal and a series of running leaps, was out of the stable door.

"What in the name of the great horn spoon!" yelled the startled Bud, as a buff-colored streak flashed past him. The next instant, with a rattle of hoofs and an alarming crackling and flapping of saddle leathers, the little pony was off in a cloud of dust, headed for the desert.

"Locoed?" shouted Jack, as he and Bud Wilson dug their big, blunt-rowelled spurs into their mounts and started in pursuit.

"I dunno," muttered Bud, shaking a big loop out of his "rope," as they tore along at break-neck speed, "but we've got to catch him."

"Why? If he doesn't fall off he'll be all right. She'll soon run herself out."

"No, she won't, either. Since you've been East they've put through a big irrigation canal out yonder. That cayuse is headed right for it, and if the kid can't stop her, they'll go sky-whooping over the edge."

"Wow! We've got to get him."

"That's what. Spur up now, and get your rope ready. Now's your chance to show me you haven't forgot all I ever taught you about roping."

Jack unslung the thirty feet of plaited rawhide from the right hand of his saddle horn, and shook out a similar loop to Bud's. Both ponies were now going at the limit of their speed, and the distance between them and the runaway seemed to be diminishing.

"Will we get him in time?" gasped Jack.

"Dunno. There's the canal yonder. It's a twenty-foot drop."

The cowboy pointed dead ahead to where a dark, purplish streak cut across the dun expanse of desert.

"We've got to beat him to it!" said Jack, gritting his teeth.

CHAPTER III.

A RACE FOR LIFE

Fast as they raced on, Jack and the cow-puncher seemed to gain on the flying Petticoats with aggravating slowness.

"Consarn that mare, she's plumb locoed, I reckon!" growled Bud, as they rocketed along, flogging their ponies to renewed efforts with their heavy quirts.

"She runs like a quarter horse!" gasped Jack, his mouth full of alkali dust; for he had no neck handkerchief to pull up over his mouth, vaquero style.

But with their splendid mounts they were bound to gain on the suddenly crazed Petticoats, and gradually they drew so close that all three riders were blanketed by the same cloud of dust.

Behind them came a second great cloud, in which rode a score or more of riders from Maguez who had hastily mounted and galloped out to see the fun as soon as they heard there was a runaway.

"The canal!" shouted Jack suddenly.

A wandering breeze for a second swept aside the dust cloud before them, and showed the fresh, raw wound gaping in the level surface of the desert. It was fully thirty feet wide, and as the canal was a new ditch, its sides were almost as steep as a wall.

Bud Wilson said nothing, but set his lips grimly. With an imperceptible movement of his wrist, he gathered his trailing loop into the air and began to whirl it above his head, first slowly and then faster and faster. The rawhide loop opened out till it was ten feet or more in circumference.

"Now!" he yelled, and at the same instant the released loop went swirling through the air.

"Yip-yip!" yelled Jack.

Bud had won proudly many a prize for roping, and was the most expert man with the lariat in his part of the West. Had he wished, he could have roped the flying Petticoats by the heels. But to have done so would have been to have brought the crazed pony down with a crash, and probably have seriously injured, if not killed, her rider.

Swish!

The great loop settled as accurately as if hands had guided it about the maddened pony's neck. Bud took a twist of his end round the saddle horn and checked the calico.

"Got her!" screamed Jack. "Yi-hi!"

But there came a sudden shout of dismay from Bud.

The calico's foot had caught in a gopher hole, and over he went, turning almost a complete somersault.

Jack gave a shout of horror as he saw the catastrophe. He feared Bud had been killed, but the lithe bronco buster was up in a second, stumbling toward his fallen horse.

But the rope did not prove equal to the sudden strain put upon it by the collapse of the calico. The instant the pony had fallen, of course its full weight had come on the rawhide, instead of there being, as Bud had planned, a gradual strangling down of the runaway. It had been, in effect, a tug of war between the flying Petticoats and the suddenly checked calico.

Crack!

The rope twanged taut as a stretched fiddle string and parted with a snap just as Bud reached back into the hip of his leathern chaperaros for his Colt.

He had determined to shoot the runaway and risk disabling Ralph, rather than have the pony take the twenty-foot plunge over the brim of the canal. But at the moment his finger pressed the trigger there came a shout from Jack, who was now only a few paces behind Petticoats. The boy's hastily thrown lariat had missed altogether.

Before their horrified eyes, the runaway buck-skin and her rider the next instant plunged in one confused heap over the bank of the canal and vanished from sight.

Jack was within a breath of following them over the brink, but in the nick of time he wheeled the carefully trained Firewater round on his haunches and averted a second calamity.

Controlling his half-maddened steed, the boy pressed to the edge of the canal. The bank was new and smooth, and as steep as the roof of a house. Ralph and his pony had rolled over and over down this place in one inextricable heap. But by the time Jack reached the edge of the steep bank, Ralph had kicked free of the big, clumsy Mexican stirrups and was struggling in the water.

The flood was rushing along in a yellow, turbid swirl. There had been a freshet in the mountains a few days before, and to relieve the pressure on the land company's dam up there, the spillways had been opened to their capacity. The canal was carrying the great overflow. It tore along between the high, steep banks like a mill race.

"The flood gates!" came a frenzied shout from Bud. He pointed westward.

In a flash Jack realized that the flood gates below must be open, and at the instant of this realization came another thought.

If he did not act and act quickly, Ralph would be carried through the gates to probably certain death.

"Ralph! Ralph!" he shouted, as he gazed down at the brave struggle his chum was making to reach the bank; but the current swept the Eastern boy away from it every time. His pony had gained the bank, and was pawing pitifully at the steep, sandy slope.

It did not need more than a glance to see that Ralph's strength was giving out. He turned up a white, despairing face to Jack, by whose side there now stood Bud Wilson.

"Quick, Jack! Chuck him the rope!" shouted Bud in a tense voice.

Inwardly angry at himself for not having thought of this before, Jack sent his rawhide snaking down the bank. Ralph, his face white and strained above the tearing yellow current, reached out in a desperate effort to clutch the rawhide. Even as his fingers gripped it, however, the current proved too much for him. He was swept away on its white-flecked surface like a bit of drift.

"Ride, boy, ride! We've got to beat him to the sluice and close the gates! It's his only chance!"

It was Bud's voice once more.