Kitabı oku: «The Border Boys on the Trail», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XV.
A GATEWAY TO FREEDOM
It was not for some time after the abrupt removal of Pete and Jack Merrill that any one of the little party in the old church spoke. Then it was the professor who broke the silence.
"I trust that no harm is meant to our young friend and his breezy companion," he said.
"Harm!" broke out Ralph indignantly, "you seem to take it easy enough. I – oh, well, I beg your pardon, professor, I guess this has got on my nerves. I didn't mean to be so short. But I do wish there was something we could do. Sitting here like this and not knowing what is going to happen is maddening."
"No use letting it get on your nerves, Ralph," counseled the quiet and deliberate Walt Phelps, "worriting about it isn't going to help any."
The professor got up and paced about the old chapel, examining its walls with care. In one or two places were the remnants of old paintings, and these he examined with great interest.
"If we should ever get away from here I think that I should have some interesting discoveries to report to the Hispanic Society," he remarked amiably.
Walt Phelps nodded. The most interesting discovery he could have made at that moment would have been a door leading into the open air and a good horse standing outside it.
At noon a Mexican entered with their dinner, a similar meal to that which we have already seen served to the prisoners in the tower. Few words were spoken over the meal. Their hearts were too heavy for that. The uncertainty as to what was to be their ultimate fate was almost maddening. In addition, they had to bear the suspense of speculation over the destiny of Jack Merrill and Coyote Pete. Without the broncho buster's cheerful face and whimsical manner to cheer them the castaways were indeed in a gloomy condition.
About the middle of the afternoon they received another visit from Black Ramon. This time he brought paper and some ink. The paper was some odd sheets, half torn and very dirty, which looked as if they might have been ripped from an old blank book. The ink was a faded, rusty colored composition. Evidently, writing materials were things for which the cattle rustlers had little use.
In a few brief words, spoken with brutal incisiveness, Black Ramon informed Ralph that his offer still held good. The boy had till the next day to make up his mind to write the letter to his father, demanding the payment of the ransom. A messenger would convey it to the nearest railroad station as soon as it was written. It was for this purpose that the ink and writing materials had been brought. As Jack had feared, the Mexican was going to work upon Ralph's sensitive nature by every means in his power, and as a step toward that end he had removed Jack and the cheerful cow-puncher.
"I've half a mind to write the letter and have it over with," said Ralph, as the door closed and they were once more alone.
"Don't you do it," said Walt Phelps decisively. "I've heard of fellows in a worse scrape than ours getting out of it all right. What's the use of your alarming your folks? After all, it may only be a bluff on the part of Black Ramon."
"I agree with our young Western friend," put in the professor, "this Mexican would hardly dare to commit any offense against the laws, and I firmly believe that if we show ourselves to be determined to resist his will, that he will ultimately let us go."
Walt Phelps had other ideas about the Mexican's character. The Western boy knew the man by reputation, and the general character of the wild outlaws who make their homes along the border. He said nothing, however, wisely thinking it best to let the professor encourage Ralph all he could.
As the afternoon waned away, therefore, the paper still lay scattered in the same spot on the floor where the leader of the cattle rustlers had placed it. By and by, a little ray of sunshine shot in through the window as the sun grew toward the west, and illumined the interior of the old chapel with a cheerful radiance. The rays played, as if in mockery of their captivity, upon the old sheets of paper, on which the thin, blue lines with which they had been ruled when they were new, were still visible.
"Wonder where Ramon picked up that paper," mused Ralph idly. "It reminds me of our exercise books at school. Looks like it might have been torn out of one of them, too. Heigh ho, I wish I was back at old Stonefell again. Don't you, professor?"
"Eh – oh!" gasped the professor, coming out of a brown study in which he had had his eyes fixed abstractedly on the paper, "yes, yes, of course. But, young man, your eyes are better than mine, and I want to ask you a question – do you notice anything on that paper?"
"Why, yes, a few marks; looks like dirt," said Ralph carelessly. "The sunlight shows them up. Nice sort of correspondence paper." He laughed mirthlessly.
"No, but," insisted the professor, "it looks to me as if characters of some kind were inscribed on them and – "
Ralph had suddenly risen and snatched up one of the sheets. A closer scrutiny had shown him that the papers were indeed covered with some sort of writing which they had not noticed before.
"You're right, professor," he exclaimed, "they are written on. See! the marks are getting clearer. But – but why didn't we see any writing before."
"Because," exclaimed the professor, "the papers have been written on with invisible fluid of some kind. Their exposure to the warm rays of the sun has brought out the writing."
"It's getting clearer," said Ralph, eagerly perusing the sheet he held. "I can't quite make it out yet, though."
He exposed the sheet he held to the sunlight, while Walt Phelps leaned interestedly over his shoulder.
"Why-why," the boy stuttered, "it's something about this church. Look here, I can see the 'Church of St. Gabriel, the old mission,' as plain as anything, and-and, why, professor," shouted the boy, half wild with excitement, "I believe that this paper, by some wonderful chance, may be the means of getting us out of here."
"Let me see," demanded the professor, taking the paper from the boy's trembling hands. Sure enough, it was covered with characters written closely, and seemingly hastily.
"'This record, made the seventeenth day of August, 1909,'" he read out, "'is to be kept in case of accidents. The secret passage lies four squares from the fifth square from the last window on the right hand side toward the altar. The old altar rail pulls back, exposing the trapdoor. Treasure in passage, one hundred paces from north of tunnel in wall, to right.' Give me that other page, Ralph, quick!"
The professor's voice shook strangely, and his dim eyes shone behind his spectacles. Rapidly he warmed the page Ralph handed him in the sunlight, and more writing leaped into view.
"'Written by me with onion juice on above date. Jim Hicks, prospector, formerly of Preston Hollow, N. Y. State. This to be an instrument for my heirs, if any, and if this is ever found.' And here is something that seems to be a postscript," gasped the professor, amazedly.
"'Will have to leave this in church and trust to luck. Place not deserted as I had thought, but in possession of Mexicans. If chance should bring this to an American's notice, let them search out Jim Hicks, the prospector, rightful owner of treasure by right of discovery, and legacy of Don Manuel Serro y Fornero, the last descendant of the old monk, Brother Hilarito.'"
"Good gracious, does that mean this church?" breathed Walt Phelps, his eyes as round as two marbles.
"Evidently," said the professor, who seemed strangely excited, "as nearly as I can make out, Jim Hicks was, or is, a miner or prospector who in some way was willed this missing treasure, whatever it is, by the last heir of one of the old monks who formerly lived in the mission. He must have come here to dig up the treasure and been surprised by the Mexicans. Fearing discovery when he would have been searched, he wrote this record in some old book he had with him and then stuffed it in a recess in the wall or other hiding place. In some way the Mexicans found it, and not knowing what it was tore some leaves out, which providentially happened to be these, and gave them to Ralph to write his last message on."
"I guess you must be right, professor," agreed Ralph, "I've often heard that the old monks, when their Indians were giving trouble, hid their treasure in secret places. And this Brother Hila – whatever his name was – must have been the last survivor of the monastery. He willed the secret to his heirs, who, in turn, gave it to this old miner, Jim Hicks."
"This is the strangest thing I ever heard of," exclaimed Walt Phelps, "but now that we have found it, what good does it do us?"
"Why, why," blurted out Ralph, "don't you see, Walt, what the invisible writing has done? It has pointed out to us a way to escape."
"How?" asked the blunt Walt.
"How – why, through the tunnel."
"Yes, if this is the right church, and if the tunnel has an exit at the other end," rejoined the practical Walt. "I don't want to throw cold water on your hopes, Ralph, but this looks to me as if it might be a trick of Black Ramon's."
"I hardly think so," said the professor. "At any rate, it is worth trying. We will make a test as soon as possible."
They did not dare, however, to try to test the secret of the old book till they could be sure they were not watched from without by one of Ramon's spies. Not till after dusk did they feel perfectly secure from observation. Then, with the professor leading, they sought out in the tesselated floor the designated square. It was easily found, and following the directions which had been memorized, for, of course, the invisible writing had disappeared with the fading of the warmth that brought it into being, the eager seekers went over the prescribed ground.
There was a moment of painful suspense as the professor laid hold of a moldering altar rail, followed by a moan of disappointment.
The rail did not yield. It was anchored solidly in its base.
"Sold!" ejaculated Ralph. Walt Phelps did not speak, but his disappointment was keen.
The professor said nothing, but thought deeply, for a few minutes. Then he spoke.
"I have it," he exclaimed suddenly, "it's we that have been wrong, and not the book."
"What do you mean?" asked Ralph, "we followed directions. I memorized them carefully myself."
"Yes, my boy, we did, but if you recollect the book said nothing about the color of the squares. We counted on the black ones, assuming that to be correct. Now might it not just as well have been the white ones that the directions meant?"
"That's so," agreed Ralph eagerly, with new hope; "let's try it that way."
"We'll have to be quick. It will be dark as pitch in a few minutes," said Walt.
Once more the three bent over the floor and counted carefully, this time using the white tiles as counters. Their enumeration brought them to another old brass rail, standing upright in what had once been the chancel of the old church.
Not one of that party drew a breath, as in the dying light the professor laid his hand on the upright pillar and pulled.
"Fooled again," burst out Ralph; but suddenly the professor, who had put his utmost strength into the task, went toppling backward, waving his arms like a scarecrow in a high gale. He fell on the marble floor with a crash, but was up again like a jack-in-the-box.
"Hooray! hooray! the old miner's writing was true!" burst out Ralph.
"Hush!" exclaimed Walt, "you'll have Ramon and his men in here in a moment."
As he spoke there came a sudden trampling of feet outside and shouts echoed.
"They've found us out!" gasped Ralph, with blanched cheeks.
"No, they're running past the door," exclaimed Walt. "Listen, something else is the matter."
"What can it be?" wondered Jack.
"No time for speculation now, my boy," warned the professor, who had recovered himself. "It's now or never. Are we going to chance the secret tunnel?"
"Yes," chorused both boys, gazing without hesitation into the black square which the swinging back of the rail had revealed. From the mouth of the dark pit a fetid, foul-smelling air rushed upward. It was the breath of the dead centuries.
"One moment," said the professor, staying Ralph as he was about to plunge forward undismayed into the abyss; "let some of that deadly gas out."
In apprehension of momentary discovery, the adventurers waited, starting at every sound. Outside the disturbance still went on. Feet could be heard rushing hither and thither. What could be happening?
"Now!" said the professor, after a few breathless minutes had passed.
Led by Ralph, they plunged downward, their feet encountering a flight of steps.
As they vanished into the unknown, the trap-door, actuated by some hidden machinery, which must have acted as their weight came on the long disused steps, swung silently back into place.
At the same instant there were several loud shouts from without, followed by a fusillade of rifles.
The escape of Jack and Pete from the tower had just been discovered, and while the ranch boy and the cow-puncher were surrounded by the perils through which we have followed them, the other members of the beleaguered party made their way forward into a blackness so utter as to feel almost solid.
CHAPTER XVI.
SHORT RATIONS
As soon as it grew daylight next morning the two fugitives, Jack Merrill and Coyote Pete, not to forget the one-eared mule, from the effects of whose stampede Pete was still limping, made a careful reconnaissance. From their lofty perch on a ledge of rock far up the cañon they could see behind them a thin thread of distant blue smoke, which still marked the scene of the destruction of the treacherous old hermit's hut.
A few bluejays hopped about here and there, eying the intruders inquisitively, a badger rushed grunting and grumbling through some nearby scrub. Otherwise the cañon, under a blinding blue sky, was still as a desert noon.
"Wa'al, all's quiet along the Potomac from the looks of things," commented Pete, "and now let's get down to the creek, and I'll wash off some of the dirt that one-eared Maud there plastered me with last night, and then we'll hit up that pocket chuck-wagon of yours."
"And after that?" asked Jack.
"Why, then, we'll keep right on going. Let's see, it was to-day that you was to have written home for money, wasn't it?"
"Yes," said Jack, with a sigh, thinking of Ralph, who, if he had only known it, was at that moment beyond Black Ramon's reach.
"Wa'al, now, if that Easterner can only stick out, we'll win home yet," gritted out Pete, "and be back with help by day after to-morrow."
"Now, then, you one-eared, cock-eyed imp of Satan, if you want a morning drink quit pulling back on that halter and come down to the creek," went on the cow-puncher, addressing the mule, which by common consent had been christened Maud.
The mule flopped her one ear wisely at Pete, and docilely allowed herself to be led to water. Both travelers drank and laved themselves, and then seated on a rock at the edge of the watercourse made a meal off the remnants of Jack's stock.
"Last of the grub, eh?" inquired Pete, as the final morsels vanished.
Jack nodded.
"Well, we'll have to tighten our belts a few notches then, I reckon," was all Pete said. It took more than the prospect of a little hunger ahead to alarm the old plainsman.
All at once his eyes fell on an object lying some distance up the creek. It reposed on the flat top of a rock and seemed to be a shallow metal basin of some sort.
"Hello!" exclaimed Pete, as he sighted it, "there's a clew to our neighbor of last night – the one who dug out so unsociable when Maud began cutting up."
"Cutting you up, I guess you mean," laughed Jack, gazing at Pete's scratched countenance, and a further facial decoration he carried in the shape of a big goose egg over one eye.
"Hum, I guess my style of beauty has been considerably damaged," grinned Pete, "and look at that one-eared demon will you, grinning at us as if she enjoyed it."
They both had to burst out laughing, forgetting their other troubles at the queer sidelong glance Maud bestowed on them. It was as if she said:
"Didn't I have a lark last night?"
"Say, Jack," said Pete suddenly, after an interval of looking about to see if any chance crumbs had been overlooked, "I'm going to have a look at that thing on the rock up there. It may give us a clew to our friend who lit out so unpremeditated."
"That washbowl, you mean?" asked Jack.
"Well, it ain't exactly a wash bowl. It's what prospectors use to wash out gold in. They take a handful of mud and some water from any creek they think looks good, and then they wash it about. Of course, the gold, being heaviest, sinks to the bottom and stays there after all the other stuff has been washed away."
An examination of the basin showed that it was an old one and much battered. On one side it bore scratched deep in its surface the initials J. H.
"Feller had quite a camp here," said Pete, looking about him. "Funny we didn't sight him when we first came up. Must have had three ponies, two to pack and one to ride."
"How can you tell that?" asked the boy.
"S'prised at you, a Western kid, asking such a question," grinned Pete, who was in high good spirits since they had apparently thrown off the Mexicans; "look at those hoofs."
"That's right," said Jack, after a short scrutiny, "there's one with only half a shoe on the off forefoot, one unshod on the hind hoofs – "
"That's one of the packers," put in Pete.
"And another the same way. Another packer," concluded Jack.
"You'll make a vaquero yet," approved Pete, "but come on, it's time for us to be up and getting. I only wish we hadn't scared J. H., whoever he is, out of ten years' growth, and we'd have been in the way of getting a hot breakfast."
"You wouldn't have wanted to have lighted a fire," cried Jack; "wouldn't the Mexicans have seen the smoke?"
"Wa'al, I guess you're right, kiddo," said Pete; "cold victuals are safe victuals in a fix like ours. Just the same, a slapjack and some frizzled bacon, with a cup of hot coffee, would appeal to yours truly right now."
"Don't talk of such things," laughed Jack; "we may be eating piñon leaves by sundown."
"And that's no childish dream," agreed Pete. "Now, let's saddle up Maud and be on our way."
A few minutes later, with Pete's heels drumming a tattoo on her bony sides, Maud was once more ambling over the trail, her one ear moving backward and forward as if some sort of clockwork contrivance was in it.
"Lot of waste of power there," observed the practical Pete. "Hitch that ear to a sewing machine or a corn sheller and you'd have any motor ever built beat a mile."
By a sort of mutual but unspoken agreement, neither of the two mentioned eating when the sun, by its height in the sky, showed that it was noon. Without a word, though, Jack, from his position behind the cantle, tightened up his belt a notch. Short rations were beginning to tell on him. Pete, however, seemed cheerful enough. He even hummed from time to time a few lines of that endless cow-puncher's song which begins:
"Lie quietly now cattle;
And please do not rattle;
Or else we will drill you
As sure as you're born."
Such good progress did they make, notwithstanding Maud's deliberate method of procedure, that by mid-afternoon they found themselves almost at the summit of the range, and in a narrow gorge formed by the closing in of the walls of the cañon. They had been following a sort of trail, which had once – so Pete guessed – been an Indian way. It was, however, overgrown almost continuously with brush, and they had been compelled to turn out a dozen times in every hundred yards. Now suddenly the path came to a stop altogether at a spot where, for a distance of twenty feet or more, the side of the cañon had slipped down. Nothing but a smooth shaly wall, impossible even for Maud's goatlike feet to attempt, lay between them and the resumption of the trail on the opposite side.
"Have to go around," decided Jack, who had dismounted and was surveying the break in the road.
"That means going back three miles at least," grumbled Pete. "Consarn the luck."
"Well, we can't go ahead."
"There's no such word as can't when you've gotter, son," rejoined Pete, gazing about him, while Maud philosophically cropped some patch grass that grew on the steep side of the trail.
"Let's see," mused Pete. "No, there wouldn't be no sense in trying to climb around it. Even this one-eared jackrabbit couldn't make it. Could you, Maud?"
The one ear shook vigorously.
"No, she's made up her mind she couldn't, and that ends it. Marry an old maid, argue with a school teacher, reason with a rattlesnake, but never try to persuade a mule of the error of her ways," said Pete solemnly.
"There's that old dead tree up there," said Jack suddenly, pointing to the steep shaly bank, where a big dead pine lay precariously balanced where the last washout that had destroyed the trail had left it.
"Well, what of it?"
"Why, it's long enough to bridge the gap and broad enough for Maud to get across on if we lead her."
"And if she'll go," said Pete. "Just the same I think your idea's a good one, Jack."
"Well, we can try it, anyhow. It wouldn't take more than a shove to dislodge that trunk, and the way it lies it ought to roll so that its two ends will catch on each end of the trail and connect them."
"By Jee-hos-o-phat, I think it'll work!" exclaimed Pete, warming up to the idea.
As he spoke he got off the mule, who for the last five minutes had had her one good ear and the stump of the other cocked forward, listening intently. Her nostrils and eyes were distended, and as Pete's feet touched the ground she gave a wild scramble in an attempt to climb the bank.
"Whoa, whoa, Maud! what's the matter with you, you one-eared locomotive on four legs," growled Pete.
"She's scared at something!" said Jack, with a worried look, gazing nervously about him.
"Yep, that's right. Wonder what it is."
"Ph-r-r-r-r!"
Maud snorted and plunged about furiously.
"Well, it ain't Mexicans, that's a cinch, for the wind is blowing up the trail," mused Pete, "and whatever she smells is coming down. Well, no use worrying about it. The sooner we get busy and get that log across, the sooner we'll be on our way. I'll just hitch old Maud to this tree, and then we'll get to work."
Maud, still prancing and snorting alarmedly, was tied to the tree in a few seconds. The two adventurers, bracing themselves at every step, started to climb up the shale toward the dead tree, which they wished to roll down the incline to connect the two ends of the broken trail.
"Now, I'll take that far end and you take this, and when I say so, we both shove, see?" said Pete. After some difficulty on the slippery foothold the shale afforded, they reached the log, which was nothing more or less than a huge pine trunk, sixty feet or more in length. Had it not been for the manner in which it had been caught on the pinnacle of two rocks at either end, they could not have hoped to move it. Balanced as it was, however, a touch set it rocking.
"Ready?" hailed Pete, after he had scrambled to his end of the log. He laid his hands on the fallen trunk and braced his feet and muscles for a mighty heave.
"All right!" hailed Jack, doing the same, when suddenly his expression of energy froze on his face, and he grew pale under his tan.
"Oh, Pete! oh!" screamed the boy, "look behind you!"
Pete, who stood with his back toward the upper end of the cañon, faced around from his grip on the timber. As he did so he echoed Jack's cry of horror.
Standing at the opposite edge of the broken trail – not twenty feet from him – was a huge, gaunt grizzly.
