The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers

by John Henry Goldfrap

  CHAPTER VIII.

  ADRIFT ON THE DESERT.

  The consternation which Coyote’s words caused may be imagined. TheBorder Boys hastily snatched up what they could, and with ProfessorWintergreen sprinting beside them, they dashed off, making for thehigher ground off to the right of their camping place. Behind them camethe wall of white, angry water, uplifting its snowy crest gleaminglythrough the darkness.

  But suddenly Jack stopped short.

  “Here, take these,” he exclaimed, thrusting his rifle and blankets intoRalph’s hands.

  Before the other could reply Jack was off into the night, sprintingaway as he had not done since the field meet at Stonefell, when he wonthat memorable two hundred yard dash. The lad had suddenly recollected,and bitterly censured himself for it, too, that in the first flash ofpanic he had entirely forgotten to turn their stock loose. Tethered asthey were, the animals would be drowned and the party helpless, unlessthe creatures were set free to swim for their lives, or gallop offbefore the flood.

  Fortunately, it was not far, as the animals were staked out somedistance below the camp and in the general direction in which theactive lads had been fleeing.

  As he ran, Jack felt for and found his knife, a big-bladed,heavily-handled affair. Reaching the ponies’ sides, he hastily slashed,with heavy sweeps of his stout blade, one after another of the tethers.The animals, super-sensitive to approaching danger, were already wildlyexcited, and as their halter lines parted one after another, theydashed off madly.

  The last animal for Jack to reach was Firewater. But the pony, insteadof dashing off like the others, nuzzled close to Jack, shivering andsweating in an extremity of terror. Do what he could, Jack could notget him to move. All at once the boy threw a quick glance behind as arapid footstep sounded.

  “Coyote!” he cried.

  “Yep, Jack, it’s that same dern fool,” cried the cow-puncher, “I seeyou had brains enough to do what I orter done afore we started on therun.”

  “No time to talk about that now,” exclaimed Jack. “Look behind you.”

  “Gee whillakers, boy, the flood’s upon us!”

  Jack’s reply was to spring upon Firewater’s back.

  “Here, Pete! Up behind me, quick!”

  “Go on, Jack, and get away; I’ll take my chances.”

  “Not much you won’t! Get up quick, now!”

  The lad extended a foot. Pete rested his weight on it for a flash andthe next instant was mounted behind Jack.

  “Yip-ee-ee-ee!” shrilled the boy, driving home his heels into thepony’s flanks.

  Firewater, balky no longer, gave a mad leap forward.Behind them roared the oncoming flood.]

  Firewater, balky no longer, gave a mad leap forward. Behind them roaredthe oncoming flood.

  “Make for the high ground!” shouted Pete, “it’s our only chance.”

  Jack made no reply, but bent lower over Firewater’s withers, urgingthe gallant little pony on. But suddenly their flight was checked.And that, too, just as they had reached the comparative safety of thehigher ground on the banks of the dry water course which had become sosuddenly converted into a menace.

  Firewater stuck his foot into a pocket-gopher hole. He struggledbravely to maintain his footing, but what with the heavy load he wascarrying and the speed at which he had been suddenly halted, the ponylost his equilibrium. The next instant Jack and Coyote were on theground while Firewater, thoroughly scared now, dashed off, whinnyingwildly in his terror.

  Pete, too, was up in a flash, but Jack lay quite still. The force ofthe fall had stunned him. The cow-puncher caught him up in a jiffy andset off clumsily, running from the menace behind with the unconsciousboy in his arms.

  But like most men whose lives have been spent in the saddle in ourgreat west, Pete was an indifferent runner. Then, too, his heavyleather “chaps,” which he had not removed while on watch, hampered him.

  Before he had run ten yards the onrush of water was upon him and hissenseless burden. The irresistible force of the flood swept him fromhis feet in a flash and bore him on its swirling surface like a chip ora straw. But half stunned, choked and dazed as he was, the cow-puncherclung to Jack. How long he could have continued to do so is doubtful,and this story might have had a far different termination. Butsomething that occurred just at that instant deprived Pete of furtherresponsibility in the matter.

  Something struck him a sudden blow in the back of the head and athousand lights instantly surged and danced before his eyes. As helost consciousness, Pete felt himself seized by what appeared to be amass of rough arms or tentacles, and lifted bodily from his feet. Theneverything faded from his senses.

  When he recovered it was broad daylight and Jack was bending over him.Sick and weak as the rugged cow-puncher felt as his senses rushed backlike an arrested tide, he could not forbear smiling as he gazed at thelad.

  Jack’s costume was, to say the least, an airy one. It consisted infact, of part of his night clothing, badly torn, and a pair of bootswhich he had just had time to put on in the hurried retreat from thecamp.

  The boy saw the smile and guessed its reason. But the smile wasspeedily replaced by a more serious expression as Pete sat up and atonce sought to have explained to him just what had happened.

  “Something that felt like one of them octopusses you read about,gripped me, and that’s about all I can recall,” he said; “what camenext?”

  “I hardly know much more about that than you,” was Jack’s response,“except that when I recovered my senses after that spill that Firewatergave us I found myself half drowned, all tangled up in the roots of abig tree that the flood was hurrying along. Feeling about me the firstthing I discovered was you, and I can tell you I was mighty glad, too,Pete, old boy. No, don’t glare at me. I know,—or can guess,—that itwas you who saved my life after Firewater threw us both off and——”

  “No more of that, youngster,” snorted Pete sternly, although his eyeswere filled with an odd moisture. “I reckon it was the old tree yonderthat saved us both. We were both struggling in the flood when it hitme and put me to sleep for a while. It’s a good thing it came on rootsfirst or we might not have bin so chipper this partic’lar A. M.”

  They both regarded the tree to which they probably owed their lives.A big stick of timber of the pine variety, and evidently of mountaingrowth, it lay a short distance from them just as the flood had left itstranded. For the cloudburst over, the water had sunk in the dry riverbed as rapidly as it had arisen. Hardly a foot of muddy liquid nowremained in the river to show the aftermath of the wild watercourse ofthe night.

  “But now, what has become of the others?” exclaimed Jack anxiously. “Ihope they are all right.”

  “I guess so, son,” said Pete, rising rather weakly to his feet, for theblow the tree had struck him, while it had not broken the skin, hadbeen a stunning one.

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

  “That’s so,” agreed Jack, “and I can see now that the water did notrise so very high. It was its speed and anger that made it terrible.”

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

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

  But fortunately for them, for they were not in the mood or conditionto stand hardship long, they were not destined to remain long in doubtas to the whereabouts of their companions. While they were gazinganxiously into the distance Jack’s keen eye suddenly detected a sharpflash off to the eastward. It was as if the sun had glinted for aninstant on a bit of sharply cut diamond. The flash was as bright as asudden ray of
fire. The next instant it was seen no more. But a secondlater it flashed up again. This time the glitter was to be seen for alonger interval.

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

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

  “Hooray!” he cried suddenly, “it’s all right! It’s Ralph and the restand 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 nightmight 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 seetheir 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 loonertickto him. What’s all this mean?”

  “That Ralph is signalling with a bit of mirror,—heliographing, theycall it in the army,” cried Jack, with a merry laugh, which ratherdiscomfited Pete.

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

  “Simple enough,” rejoined Jack; “he was making the flashes long andshort,—using the Morse telegraph code, in fact. You know we had acadet corps at Stonefell to which we both belonged. Field signallingand heliographing was part of our camping instruction, but I guessneither of us ever dreamed it would come in handy in such a way asthis. That certainly was a bully idea of Ralph’s. He knew if we wereany 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 andmight 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 columnand 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 wedo?”

  “Keep your shirt—or what’s left of it—on, son, you’ll need it,” saidPete slowly, a smile overspreading his sun-bronzed features, “thar’smore ways of killing cats than choking ’em ter death with superfinecream. Likewise thar’s more ways of lighting a fire than by usingparlor matches.”

  Jack watched Pete wonderingly as he took out his knife in silence andstrode off to the tree. He found a dead branch and whittling off thewet outside bark soon reached the dry interior. This done, he cut thewood down to a stick about two feet long and a little thicker than astout lead pencil. Then he hacked away at some more of the dry woodtill he had a small flat bit of thoroughly dry timber. In this heexcavated 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 adawning perception of what the old plainsman was going to do.

  By the time Jack was back with the twigs,—the dryest he couldfind,—Pete had scraped off a lot of sawdust-like whittlings and piledthem about the hole he had dug out. Then taking the pencil-like stickbetween his palms, he inserted its lower end in the hole, carefullyheaped the sawdust stuff about it, and began rotating it slowly atfirst and then fast.

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

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

  Instantly a pillar of dun-colored, smoke, thick and greasy, rolledupward 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 hisvoice, “yer see that this here hell-io-what-you-may-call ’em, ain’tther only trick in the plainsman’s bag. By raising and lowering thatcoat you kin talk in your Remorse thing as long as you like.”

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

  “That’s all right, son. But take it frum yer Uncle Dudley that we noneof 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 coatat long and short intervals, forming a species of smoke telegraphyeasily readable by anyone who understood the Morse code.

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