The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers

“You see,” he went on, “they got a good start of us and should have reached the high ground afore the water hit.”

“That’s so,” agreed Jack, “and I can see now that the water did not rise so very high. It was its speed and anger that made it terrible.”

“Wonder how far that blamed old tree carried us,” said Pete, rather anxiously. “It’s just curred to me that if we don’t connect with the stock and some grub pretty quick, we’ll be in a bad fix.”

He gazed about him as he spoke. On every side stretched monotonous plains covered with the same gray-green brush as the savannah amidst which they had camped the night before. But the question in Pete’s mind was whether or not it was the same plain or another altogether on which they stood.

But fortunately for them, for they were not in the mood or condition to stand hardship long, they were not destined to remain long in doubt as to the whereabouts of their companions. While they were gazing anxiously into the distance Jack’s keen eye suddenly detected a sharp flash off to the eastward. It was as if the sun had glinted for an instant on a bit of sharply cut diamond. The flash was as bright as a sudden ray of fire. The next instant it was seen no more. But a second later it flashed up again. This time the glitter was to be seen for a longer interval.

“What on airth is it?” gasped Pete, to whom Jack had indicated the phenomenon.

“Wait one moment and maybe I can tell you if it is what I hope,” cried Jack in an excited tone. With burning eyes he watched the distant point of light flashing and twinkling like a vanishing and reappearing star.

“Hooray!” he cried suddenly, “it’s all right! It’s Ralph and the rest and they are all safe. But they don’t know yet where we are.”

Pete gazed at the boy as if he suspected that the stress of the night might have turned his mind.

“Anything else you kin see off thar?” he asked sardonically.

“Nothing but that they say the horses are all right, and that if we see their signals we are to send up a smoke column,” replied Jack calmly, his countenance all aglow.

“Look hyar, Jack Merrill, I promised your father ter take care of yer,” said Pete sternly, “an’ I don’t want ter take back a raving loonertick to him. What’s all this mean?”

“That Ralph is signalling with a bit of mirror, – heliographing, they call it in the army,” cried Jack, with a merry laugh, which rather discomfited Pete.

“Wall, that may be, too,” he admitted grudgingly, “thar sun would catch it and make it flash. But how under ther etarnal stars kin you tell what he’s saying?”

“Simple enough,” rejoined Jack; “he was making the flashes long and short, – using the Morse telegraph code, in fact. You know we had a cadet corps at Stonefell to which we both belonged. Field signalling and heliographing was part of our camping instruction, but I guess neither of us ever dreamed it would come in handy in such a way as this. That certainly was a bully idea of Ralph’s. He knew if we were any place around we would see the flashes and be able to read them, whereas we couldn’t have sighted them in the tall brush so easily and might have missed them altogether.”

“Wall, what air we goin’ ter do now?” asked Pete, rather apathetically.

“Do? Why, light a fire, of course. Then they’ll see the smoke column and come over to us with grub and the ponies.”

“Hum,” snorted Pete. “Got any matches?”

“Why, no. Haven’t you?”

“Nary a one.”

“Phew!” whistled Jack. “Now we are in a fix for certain. What can we do?”

“Keep your shirt – or what’s left of it – on, son, you’ll need it,” said Pete slowly, a smile overspreading his sun-bronzed features, “thar’s more ways of killing cats than choking ’em ter death with superfine cream. Likewise thar’s more ways of lighting a fire than by using parlor matches.”

Jack watched Pete wonderingly as he took out his knife in silence and strode off to the tree. He found a dead branch and whittling off the wet outside bark soon reached the dry interior. This done, he cut the wood down to a stick about two feet long and a little thicker than a stout lead pencil. Then he hacked away at some more of the dry wood till he had a small flat bit of thoroughly dry timber. In this he excavated a small hole to fit the point of the pencil-like stick.

“Now git me some dry twigs from that brush yonder,” he directed Jack, who had been gazing on these preparations with much interest and a dawning perception of what the old plainsman was going to do.

By the time Jack was back with the twigs, – the dryest he could find, – Pete had scraped off a lot of sawdust-like whittlings and piled them about the hole he had dug out. Then taking the pencil-like stick between his palms, he inserted its lower end in the hole, carefully heaped the sawdust stuff about it, and began rotating it slowly at first and then fast.

All at once a smell of burning wood permeated the air. From the sawdust a tiny puff of blue smoke rolled up. Suddenly it broke into flame.

“Now the twigs! Quick!” cried Pete, and as Jack gave him the dry bits of stick he piled them on the blazing punk-wood, blowing cautiously at the flame. In ten minutes he had a roaring fire. But the old plainsman’s work wasn’t finished yet. He began hacking green branches from the tree and piling them on top of his blaze.

Instantly a pillar of dun-colored, smoke, thick and greasy, rolled upward into the still air.

Pete took off his leather coat and threw it over the smoking pyre, smothering the column of vapor.

“Now then, son,” he said, with the faintest trace of triumph in his voice, “yer see that this here hell-io-what-you-may-call ’em, ain’t ther only trick in the plainsman’s bag. By raising and lowering that coat you kin talk in your Remorse thing as long as you like.”

“Pete, I take off my hat to you,” exclaimed Jack, feeling ashamed of the rather superior manner he had assumed when talking of the heliograph a while before.

“That’s all right, son. But take it frum yer Uncle Dudley that we none of us know everything. Thar’s things you kin larn from an Injun, jus’ as I larned how ter git that fire a-goin’.”

Kneeling by the smoldering smoke-pile, Jack raised and lowered the coat at long and short intervals, forming a species of smoke telegraphy easily readable by anyone who understood the Morse code.

An hour of anxious waiting followed and then upon the scene galloped at top speed the rest of the adventurers bearing with them some food, scanty but welcome, and best of all, the ponies and one rifle.

CHAPTER IX

THE LONE RANCHO

Well, that was an odd meal, that refection of water-soaked biscuit and canned corned beef, with flood water as a beverage. Perhaps in all the adventures of the Border Boys, when in after years they came to recall them, no scene stood out quite so strikingly.

For one thing, Coyote Pete alone, of the party, possessed any sort of wardrobe. The professor was clad in his “barber pole” pajamas. Ralph boasted a shirt and Walt Phelps possessed the same with the addition of a pair of socks, which latter hardly fulfilled requirements so far as a covering for his nether limbs was concerned.

From time to time the Border Boys had to look at each other and burst out laughing. Only the professor viewed the matter in a serious light.

“Suppose we should meet some ladies,” he asked indignantly.

“Reckon thar ain’t many of ’em hereabouts,” ventured Coyote, spreading a big slice of beef on a bit of soggy bread. “The burros is ther only representatives of the gentle sex fer a good many miles, I opinion.”

The burros, relieved of their packs, which had been swept away, wagged their ears appreciatively at this, and continued browsing on the short, coarse grass which grew in patches here and there, and which the boys were delighted to see seemed also to be palatable to the horses.

Ralph and the others had already related how the terrified animals had been recaptured without difficulty early that day. In fact, a circumstance which has often been noted was their good fortune, namely, that panic-stricken horses in lonely, wild countries, will actually seek human companionship, – provided, of course, that they have already been domesticated. As for the burros, their loud “hee-haws” had resounded all night.

Ralph also explained how the idea of the mirror heliograph came to him. The lad who, as has been explained, was a bit of a dandy, was horrified to discover the abbreviated state of his wardrobe. But a search of his shirt pocket revealed his pocket-mirror with its folding brush and comb fittings. The railroad king’s son had at once set to work to make himself presentable about the head at least, and was combing his hair neatly and wondering how Jack and Pete had fared, when the sun caught the mirror and it flashed blindingly into his eyes. This gave him the idea of flashing it in all directions in the hope that the others, if within sight, would catch its glint. Then came the happy thought of telegraphing with the bit of glass by alternately covering and uncovering it. The idea had met with the warm approval of the professor and Walt Phelps, although, perhaps, even they had not been over sanguine of results.

“Well,” said Jack at length, after the events of the night and the following incidents had been discussed and re-discussed, “what are we going to do now?”

“Get clothes,” cried Ralph, without an instant’s hesitation, regarding his bare legs disparagingly.

“By all means, yes,” agreed the professor.

Coyote Pete grinned.

“Jack,” said he, “will you be so kind as ter step ter the telephone and tell the Blue Front Store to send up a few samples of men’s furnishings?”

All but the professor burst into a roar of laughter at this sally.