The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers

“At any rate,” suggested Walt Phelps, “we’re not likely to get held up.”

“Not so sure about that,” said the professor, “I have the money belt containing most of our finances around my waist. I always sleep with it there.”

“Hooray!” shouted the boys, who, up to that moment had not once thought of the important question of finances. It struck them now with sobering force.

“By George!” cried Jack, “if it hadn’t been for your foresight, professor, we might have been penniless as well as wardrobeless.”

“That’s right,” agreed Coyote Pete, “and ther chance that you’d stand of being helped out by the greasers would be about ther same as a snowflake ’ud have on a red-hot cook stove.”

“My idea is to lose no time in striking out for a town or village where we can get some clothes, even if they are only Mexican garments,” announced Jack.

“And food, too,” put in Walt Phelps, who liked to get his three meals a day, “we’ll be on starvation diet if we don’t stock up on that.”

After more discussion it was agreed to follow up the dry bed of the river, as the professor’s map showed a small village some distance up a stream which, though unnamed on the map, seemed to be the one on whose banks they now were. This decision reached, no time was lost in mounting. There was no saddling to be done, for the saddles had been swept off with most of the rest of their outfit.

“If you ever catch me camping in the dry bed of a river again you are welcome to hang me to a sour apple tree,” grumbled Walt Phelps, as he mounted.

“I reckon I’m ter blame fer it all,” volunteered Coyote Pete, “but I never thought as how that far-off storm would affect us in the plains. That must have bin a jim-dandy of a cloudburst.”

“I’d hate to have been any closer to it than we were,” laughed Jack. “If we had been, we’d have been going yet, I imagine.”

“I heard of a cloudburst once that did some good, though,” struck in Pete; “ther thing happened to a friend of mine in Californy. He wuz a miner, Jefferson Blunt by name.

“Wall, sir, Jeff had struck such all-fired bad luck up on the Stanislaus River that he’d about concluded to pull out for other regions when, all of a sudden, one night up came a storm, and in the middle of it there come the all-firedest cloudburst that Jeff had ever heard of. It picked up his cabin and floated Jeff off down the river, a-going like a blue streak. He thought every minute that he’d hear Gabriel’s trumpet and see ther golden stairs, but that little old cabin was well built and watertight, and it floated like a boat.

“It must hev been hours, Jeff says, afore he felt ther thing give a bump and stop. As soon as he dared he opened ther door and peeked out. He wuz in a part uv ther country he’d never seen. It was all cliffs and big trees and very imposing, and ther like of that, – that ‘imposing’ is Jeff’s word.

“Wall, Jeff he steps out of his sea-going shack and looks about him, and ther first thing he sees is a big streak of ore just a-glitter with gold and stuck, like a band of yaller ribbon along ther cliff face above his head.

“Jeff had bin so unlucky that first he thinks it’s jes’ fool’s gold and not the real article. But he soon convinces himself thet he’s struck it rich at last. Wall, ter make a long story short, Jeff files a claim and in a few y’ars is a rich man, and what d’ye s’pose he called ther mine?”

“‘The Cloud Burst,’ of course!” cried Jack.

“How’d yer guess it?” asked Pete. “But yer right, and thet’s ther only cloudburst I ever hearn’ of, thet brought anybody any luck.”

“Personally, if I could find a pair of trousers,” wailed the professor, “I should esteem their possession almost above even such a lucky discovery as you have related.”

“I think I’d trade it right now for a porter-house steak and trimmings, brown gravy and green corn, and – ”

“See here,” put in Ralph, with assumed indignation, “if you don’t shut up I’ll, I’ll – ”

“Go right home,” chuckled Walt teasingly; “you’d be a fine sight in that rig. I’ll bet the folks back east would have you put in the calaboose.”

But by noon the gay spirits of the boys were considerably toned down. No sign of a town had yet come in sight and they were all hot, hungry and tired. The odd procession, with the burros tagging along behind, looked disconsolate enough as it followed the windings of the river. The shallow aftermath of the flood steamed and simmered under the hot sun, sending up unpleasant odors, – yet they had to drink it or go without.

By way of cheering the party up, Coyote Pete began to sing – or rather wail – in the high-pitched voice affected by cow-punchers singing to their cattle:

“O-ho-wa-hay da-own upon the Su-wahanee River,
Fa-har, fa-har a-way – ”

But before he could begin the next line Ralph struck in with:

“There’s where our pants are floating ever;
There’s where they’re gone to stay!”

In the general roar of laughter which followed, the “grouch” which had settled down on the tired wayfarers vanished like the spring snow under a burst of sunlight.

With a shout the boys, their troubles forgotten in an outburst of that good nature that makes the whole world kin, plunged forward, their shirt tails flying.

“Yip-yip-ye-ee!”

The joyous yell filled the air. And then it broke off into a real cheer, for, on surmounting the summit of a small eminence, they saw below them, not more than a mile off, a small adobe house of unusual type, for it had two stories. It was surrounded by a grove of green willows which delighted the eye tired by the endless gray-green stretches of grease-wood savannahs.

Even the dignified professor joined in the enthusiasm, and in a minute a cavalcade was bearing down on the place at breakneck speed. As they neared it in a thunder of hoofs and a cloud of yellow dust, a door opened and the figure of a gaunt Mexican, with long, shaggy, black hair hanging straight and lank to his shoulders, stepped out. His next move halted the leaders of the party abruptly.

He jerked a long-barreled rifle to his shoulder and pointed it threateningly.

“Mira rurales!” he yelled to some one within the house.

“No rurales! Americanos!” cried Coyote Pete.

The effect was magical. The man’s startled air changed, and with a sheepish smile he stepped forward as Jack and Ralph, who were in advance, drew rein.

“What did he mean by rurales, I wonder?” asked Ralph of Jack in a low tone as the others loped up.

“Why, rurales are a species of police. Rangers, they are called sometimes. They are wild chaps, mostly recruited from the ranks of brigands and highwaymen. The government pays them a high figure to be good and keep law and order.”

“But this man seemed to fear them.”

“Maybe he has reason to. But we can’t be particular. At any rate, we are a strong enough party to look after our own hands. But see, here comes his wife. I guess, after all, he is nothing more unlawful than a cattle rancher in a small way, who perhaps, once-in-a-while takes an unbranded calf or two from his neighbor’s estates.”

The woman who joined the man, who by this time had set down the rifle, was a stout, slatternly-looking creature in a greasy cotton wrapper. She shot out a few rapid words in a low voice to the other, who replied in equally low tones. So far as Jack, who was closest, could judge, the woman seemed to be protesting against something, and the man stilling her objections.

Coyote Pete as spokesman now advanced, and in Spanish asked if they could obtain lodging and refreshment for themselves and their stock.

CHAPTER X

AFTER MIDNIGHT

To their astonishment, the man seemed to hesitate. They had judged from the poverty-stricken look of his place and belongings that he would jump at the chance to make some money easily. But it seemed that this was not the case.

While the fellow still hesitated, glancing covertly at the newcomers, the professor did a foolish thing. He exhibited his money belt and tapping it made it give forth the suggestive jingle of coins. Coyote Pete’s expression grew angry for a moment, but he checked his chagrin at the professor’s foolish move.

But the exhibition of the party’s financial solidity seemed to have decided the ill-favored Mexican and his wife, for after some more parley, which somehow appeared to Jack to be merely for form’s sake, they agreed to shelter the party and their stock at two dollars each, Mexican, which is equivalent to one dollar of our money.

“Cheap enough,” said Jack, as ten minutes later they turned their stock loose in the corral and watched them attack with wholesome appetites the hay stack in the center of the enclosure.

“May be dear enough before we get through,” thought Coyote Pete to himself.