"Waal, perfusser, hev it your own way," grunted Pete, rather red and angry. The professor's logic did indeed seem unassailable. The rebels of Northern Chihuahua were getting arms—but how? The cow-puncher and the boys recalled now a visit made to Mr. Merrill's ranch some weeks before by a party of United States secret agents.
The men were puzzled and angry over their failure to locate the "leak." Somehow arms were being shipped across the border into Chihuahua from American soil, but just how had hitherto baffled all the efforts of their ingenuity to discover.
"There, there, don't be so easily offended," counseled the professor, perceiving Pete's palpable irritation. "After all, the matter has nothing to do with us. We are here to measure the mesa for scientific purposes, not to get into arguments over how a band of insurrectos are getting their arms. Come, boys, to work. Let us begin at the top, by measuring the altar. Suppose, Jack, you lay the tape on it, while I make a rough field sketch of the structure."
The boys, now over their first repulsion to having anything to do with the altar, about which such grisly memories clustered, eagerly began to carry out these orders, while Coyote Pete seated himself on the side of the summit overlooking the travelers' camp below, and amused himself by throwing small bits of detached rock down at the unoffending One Spot, Two Spot and Three Spot.
The base of the altar being duly measured and recorded, Jack, tape in hand, followed by the others, clambered up its rough sides, which afforded an easy foothold, for the purpose of ascertaining the dimensions of the top. To the lad's astonishment, however, there was no summit. That is to say, the altar was hollow.
The professor exhibited considerable scientific excitement on hearing this. The man of science had been greatly puzzled over the total absence of any traces of the human sacrifices he knew must have taken place there. He now hailed Jack eagerly.
"Are there not some bones or traces of sacrifices inside it, my boy?" he inquired excitedly.
"Nary a bone," shouted Walter cheerfully.
"Hold on, though," cried Jack. "There are some queer-looking things down in one corner."
Lowering himself inside the altar, he made for one corner of the erection, in which he had spied a heap of fragile-looking bones of some kind.
"Skeletons of snakes!" he cried, holding up one of these for the inspection of the professor, who had by this time hoisted his bony frame over the top of the altar and now stood beside them.
"That's right, my boy; they are serpents' skeletons. Doubtless in their sacrificial ceremonies these people also offered up rattlesnakes, which seem to have been a sort of sacred reptile among them; much as, in a sense, the cat was sacred to the ancient Egyptians, and the python is worshiped in certain parts of India."
"But, professor," protested Jack, "if, as you say, numerous human sacrifices were offered here in the past, why do we not find any human remains here?"
"Who can say, my boy? Many of the habits of these pre-historic peoples are veiled in mystery. We can only surmise and reconstruct. They may have burned them or disposed of them in some other way."
"Say!" exclaimed Ralph suddenly. "This floor sounds to me as if it was hollow; maybe there's a chamber or something underneath."
The boy, who had been stamping about with a vague sense of making some such discovery, hailed them with excited looks.
"Hollow, you say?" asked the professor, with every appearance of deep interest.
"Yes, listen!"
Again Ralph stamped about. There was no question about it—the stone-paving, of which the floor of the altar was formed, gave out an unmistakably hollow sound.
The professor was down on his hands and knees instantly, searching about, like a hound on the scent. In the meantime the others stamped about in other parts of the interior, but only where Ralph's feet had given out the hollow sound did the floor appear anything but solid.
"Queer!" exclaimed the professor, as, after a considerable search, he rose to his feet covered with dust and streaming with perspiration, "there should be some sort of trap-door here, to judge by the sounds, but so far as I can see, the joints between the pavement are perfectly tight, and I can find no ring or lever which might open such an aperture."
"Perhaps——" began Ralph, but he was interrupted by a sudden wild yell from Pete.
"Wow! Yee-ow! Come here quick, everybody!"
CHAPTER VI.
THE LEGEND OF A FORGOTTEN RACE.
Leaping and scrambling over the top of the hollow altar to the best of their abilities, the four explorers found their cow-puncher friend dancing wildly about on the edge of the mesa, in imminent peril of tumbling over altogether. He was wildly excited, and, as they emerged, he pointed down over the cliff edge.
"Whatever is the matter?" exclaimed Jack, regarding the antics of the usually staid cow-puncher with amazement.
"The stock! Look at the stock!" yelled Pete.
Peering over the edge at the bunch-grass belt in which their ponies were tethered, the adventurers saw a spectacle which might well have been calculated to excite the cow-puncher. One Spot, Two Spot and Three Spot were tearing round and round at the end of their tethers, in the wildest alarm, evidently, while the cayuses were stamping and snorting, with distended nostrils and wild, frightened eyes.
"What's the matter with them?" gasped Walt, astonished at the sight, as well he might be. The desert was as empty as ever, and there was no sign of anything in the rocky hills to the south that might have excited their alarms.
"Thet's jes' it," said Pete. "What is the matter with 'em? They ain't actin' up thet er way fer nuthin', you kin bet."
"Something must have scared them," said Jack. "Maybe it was those rocks you were throwing down."
"No, it warn't that, son. Ole One Spot he looked up here a minute ago, and giv' his eye a knowin' wink, as much as ter say: 'Go ahead; I know you won't hurt us.' No, siree; it's suthin' they've smelled out, er seen, that's given 'em the scare of their young lives."
"Maybe it was something on the other side of the mesa. Let's go and look," cried Jack.
Followed by the others, he ran across the flat summit, but an earnest inspection of the surroundings on that side failed to reveal any explanation for the animals' sudden terror. For all the strange objects that lay about them, they might have been in the middle of a desolate ocean.
"No wonder they call this the Haunted Mesa," snorted Pete. "I tell you, perfusser, ther sooner you git them thar measurements a-measured, and we're hiking out of this neck of the woods, the better I'll be pleased. 'Tain't natural, all these queer goings on."
"Maybe a coyote or something scared them," suggested Ralph.
"And them used ter seeing 'em every day," scoffed Pete. "Guess again, son. It takes something with hoofs, horns and red fire about it to scare a burro, and you kin bet your Sunday sombrero on that."
"Well, I propose that we adjourn the meeting till after dinner," laughed Jack; "all in favor, will signify by saying 'aye.'"
The chorus that answered him left no doubt of "the sense of the meeting," and a rapid descent of the mysterious mesa was begun. A good meal was not long in being prepared, thanks to Coyote Pete's skill as a camp cook. Seated over their dinner, the main topic of conversation was naturally the unaccountable occurrence of the morning. But although a score of explanations were advanced, nobody could hit on one that seemed to fit the case.
"This water is singularly pure and sparkling,"' said the professor finally, by way of changing the subject, and holding up his full tin cup.
"Yep; I remember hearing old cowmen say that there's no water in New Mexico any better than this from the Haunted Mesa," said Pete, stretching himself out, and lighting his inevitable after-meal-time pipe. "Though that ain't sayin' a heap," he admitted.
"Wonder how those old what-you-may-call-ums ever managed to dig such a well?" questioned Ralph.
"Comes to my mind now," said Pete, "that it ain't exactly a well. An old Injun that used ter hang around with the Flying Z outfit tol
e us oncet that thar was a subterranean river flowed under here, and that once upon a time afore all the country dried up, considerable more water came to the surface here than there does now."
"A subterranean river?" asked the professor, at once interested.
"Yes, sir," rejoined Pete, "and not the only one in the West, either. There's one in Californy that flows underground fer purty near fifty miles, as I've heard tell."
"This is most remarkable," said the professor. "I, too, have heard of subterranean rivers in this part of the world, but I have never had the opportunity to explore one. Did this Indian you speak of ever tell you where this river emerges?"
"He said it come out some place across the frontier in Chihuahua; I don't jest rightly recollect where," said Pete carelessly, as if the subject did not interest him much, as indeed it did not.
"I don't see what use a subterranean river is to anybody, anyhow," he went on. "If it was on top, now, it might be some use."
"But this is most interesting," protested the professor, while the boys lay about with their chins propped in their hands in intent attitudes. "Then, too, if this river exists, perhaps it is even navigable."
"Why, professor!" exclaimed Jack. "Is it not possible that it was to this river that those drawings of boats that interested and puzzled you so much had reference?"
"Quite possible, my boy," agreed the man of science.
"I wish we could find some way of getting down into it," said Ralph wistfully, poking at the ground, as if he thought he might force an entrance that way.
"Thar you go," laughed Pete. "Giv' you boys a cayuse, an' you'll ride him to death. I jes' mentioned that a lying, whisky-drinking old Injun had sprung a pipe-dream about a lost river, and thar you go navagatin' it in a Coney Island steamboat."
The boys could not help bursting into a laugh at the cow-puncher's whimsical way of talking. The professor joined in, too, for none realized better than he did that for a moment he, too, had been quite carried away by the idea.
"I expect that it is as you say, Pete," he agreed. "These Indians are most unreliable people. If anybody was to believe all the weird legends an Indian tells him, he would spend the best part of his life on wild-goose chases. Why, the Indians of the Mojave desert in California can even tell a circumstantial story about a buried city of Mojave. According to their contention, a great flood, occurring long ago, wiped it out and buried it in the sands of the desert."
"Has any one ever tried to find it?" asked Jack.
"Many expeditions have been fitted out for the purpose, my boy," was the rejoinder, "but so far no trace has ever been found of it, and it is, no doubt, like the lost river of which Pete was telling us, a mere myth."
"I didn't say it was a miff," protested Pete. "I jes' said I didn't believe it."
The remainder of that afternoon was spent in making more measurements and sketches of the interesting mesa, and the boys, on their own account, conducted a search for a possible entrance to the lost river. But, as may be supposed, they found none.
"I guess as romance-seekers we are not a success," said Jack, as at sun-down they prepared to quit. "Just think, what a proud bunch we'd have been if we could say we—The Border Boys—discovered the lost river of the mesa dwellers."
"We might be a sorry bunch, too," amended the practical Walt. "I tell you, Jack, I don't want anything to do with lost rivers, especially when they are underground."
"Walt, the spirit of adventure is lacking in you," laughed Jack. "You'd never make a Don Quixote——"
"A donkey who?" asked Walt innocently.
"Oh, you're the limit," chuckled Ralph, going off into a roar of laughter at the ranch boy's expense.
That evening the animals' pasture was changed to the opposite side of the mesa, where they could find fresh grass. The camp, however, was left as it was. After supper watches were assigned, as usual, the latter part of the night guardianship falling to Coyote Pete and Jack once more. When, soon after midnight, Walt and Ralph Stetson aroused them, there was nothing much to report except that One Spot had engaged in a spirited kicking match with his brethren. Outside of that, all had been, to quote Walt:
"Quiet along the Mesomac."
"We'll patrol round the whole mesa," said Coyote Pete, as he and Jack shouldered their rifles, "meeting by the stock on the other side."
After a few words more, the two sentries strode off into the darkness in different directions, meeting, as arranged, by the stock. Neither had anything to report, and in this way they kept up the night watch for an hour or more. They had met for the sixth time by the tents containing their sleeping comrades, when from the opposite side of the mesa came a shrill neigh of terror, followed by sounds of wild galloping and snorting.
"Something's up!" shouted Pete, as, with his rifle in readiness and followed closely by Jack, he tore around the mesa to ascertain the cause of the trouble.
As the two sentries emerged into view of the spot in which the stock had been tethered, they came upon a spectacle which, for a moment, caused them to recoil as abruptly as if a deep canyon had suddenly opened up before them.
CHAPTER VII.
WHAT CAME ACROSS THE DESERT.
That which brought the two—the plainsman and the lad—to such an amazed halt was nothing more nor less than the sight of the huge forms which had appeared to Jack in the sand-storm and which had given them such an alarm the night before, and which doubtless, as they now viewed it in a flash of intuition, had almost stampeded the stock while their owners were exploring the top of the mesa. But Coyote Pete was not the man to remain long rooted in astonishment.
With one quick jerk, he raised his rifle, and a vivid spatter of fire followed. As the report died out, one of the great forms sank to the ground with a scream that sounded almost human. The others glided off in the same direction as they had the night before, and vanished in the same mysterious way, before the thunderstruck Jack could get a shot at them.
"They're real, at any rate," exclaimed Coyote Pete, showing in his tone of relief, that until the great shadowy mass had sunk before his bullet, he had had some doubts of that fact.
"W-w-w-w-what is it?" came a frightened voice at their elbows, and, looking around, they saw the professor, in pajamas striped like a barber's pole, gazing apprehensively about him. Close behind him came Ralph Stetson and Walt, their weapons clasped determinedly, and evidently ready to face whatever emergency the sudden shot had betokened.
"Yes, what is it—Indians or bears?" demanded Ralph, entirely forgetful of the fact that bears are not wont, as a rule, to roam the barren desert.
"Dunno, but we'll see in a minute," said the cow-puncher, in answer to the excited questions. Followed by the rest, he made his way forward to where the great bulk that he had shot lay still and motionless on the ground. Even Jack owned to a slight feeling of apprehension as they neared the great form,—harmless as, whatever it might be, it had now become.
As for the stock, they were still plunging wildly about and snorting in a terrified fashion, and, had it not been for their stout raw-hide tethers, they would undoubtedly have stampeded.
Drawing a match, Pete held it high as he neared the stricken bulk outstretched before them. The next minute he gave an astonished cry:
"A camel!"
"A what!" gasped the entire group in unison.
"Jes' what I said, a backterian camel," reiterated Pete, striking another match.
They could all see then that he spoke the truth, astounding as it seemed. The creature that lay still before them, a bullet through its brain, was a veritable, undoubted specimen of the Bactrian species.
"But—but—great heavens!" cried Jack, hardly able to believe his eyes, "how,—what——"
"What on earth is a camel doing out here on the New Mexican desert?" the professor finished for him.
"Going eight days without a drink," suggested Ralph in an undertone; but none of the party was in a mood for humor just then.
It was Pete who solved the
mystery.
"I've got it," he exclaimed, "and I'm a plum-busted idjut not to have thought uv it afore; I've hearn about 'em often enough. This here backterian camel must be one of that bunch of Circus Jesse's."
"Circus Jesse! Who was he, or she?" asked Jack.
"Why, he was a feller what owned a big eastern circus, but owned a ranch out here as well. It struck him one time that if camels was good for transportation purposes over the Sahara desert they ought ter be just as good here. So, what does he do but start a camel express from Maguez ter Amadillo over the border, with some of the backterians frum his circus."
"And didn't it work?" asked Ralph.
"No. That is, it did fer a while, till ther novelty wore off, and then folks went back ter ther old reliable mule or burro. Circus Jesse, he got so blamed sore, that one fine day he turned the whole shootin' match of his backterians loose, and packin' his trunk, let the country, and resolved in futur' ter stick ter his circus."
"Was that long ago?" asked Jack. "I shouldn't have thought the creatures would have lived long without being recaptured."
"It's about five years since Jesse got out, I reckon," rejoined Pete, "an' fer a while camel-hunting was a popular sport. By an' by, however, they got so wary no one could get near 'em, and, except fer a scare they'd throw inter a prospector now and ag'in, we never heard no more of 'em. I'd clean fergotten all about 'em, till I made this one inter cold backterian meat."
"I suppose they found food and water here and regarded the Mesa as their own property," declared Jack.
"That's about it. This is a place that's seldom visited, and I guess they just figgered out that they'd found a happy home."
"But what became of the rest of them?" asked Ralph, who had been apprised by Jack of the strange vanishment of the dead creature's mates.
"Must uv gone down that draw I noticed frum ther top uv ther mesa to-day," explained Pete. "Yer see, frum here, it would look as if they vanished inter the solid earth when they entered it, bein' as how you can't see there's any kind of a gully there till you get up high."
The Border Boys Across the Frontier Page 4
