CHAPTER XIV.

TRAVELS WITH A MULE.

"Well, was I right?"

"Oh, say, don't rub it in, Jack. Of course you were. I was a fool to have gone to sleep, but----"

"Never mind reproaching yourself now, Pete," said Jack soberly. "The thing to do is to get out of here as quick as possible."

"Yes, we've no time to lose," said Pete, a serious look coming over his ordinarily cheerful countenance.

Jack caught a more serious meaning underlying the words than they seemed to hold in themselves.

"I should say so," he rejoined. "We've got to catch that old ruffian and give him the thrashing of his life. The idea of shutting us in here. I thought he was crazy, and now I know it."

"Not so crazy as you think, Jack," replied Pete gravely. "I'm afraid he's got more sense than we gave him credit for, and that right now we are in more serious danger than at any time since we escaped."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind now. I don't want to scare you to death without there being any necessity for it. What I want to impress on you is that there is no time to lose."

"Of course, I appreciate that," rejoined Jack, not quite making out what Pete meant, but thinking it wiser to abstain from asking questions at the moment, "but how are we to get out?"

"Dunno right now," said Pete, scratching his head abstractedly.

"I have it," cried Jack suddenly. "We'll burn the door down."

"What about matches?"

"There are still some embers on the hearth there, and a pile of brush beside it. I'm sure we can do it."

"Well, let's get to work, then," said Pete, who seemed strangely ill at ease.

A goodly pile of brush was soon piled against the rough door and ignited by means of taking an ember from the fire and blowing on it till it burst into flame. Up roared the flames, the timber fire crackling against the stone roof and filling the hut with a choking smoke. Luckily, most of this escaped by the window, or they might have run a good chance of being suffocated.

"Say, it'll take a year to burn through the door at this rate," choked out Jack, after fifteen minutes or so of this.

"It would if we were going to burn through it, but we ain't," chuckled Pete. "Let the fire burn down now--or, better still, there's some water in that jar; just throw it over the blaze."

This being done, the fire soon died out, and then Pete, wresting one of the heavy loose stones from the hearth, battered with all his might against the charred wood. It took a long time, but at last a chink of daylight appeared.

"Hooray!" shouted Jack, as they attacked it with a piece of iron found near the cooking-hearth. Soon quite a hole appeared, and Pete, reaching through, encountered a heavy wooden bar leaned against the door from the outside, placed to hold it firmly closed. It was the work of but a few seconds to dislodge this and emerge into the open air.

Their work, however, had taken so much time that it was dusk when they stepped out of the door. Without a word, Pete, as if he had gone suddenly mad, darted off toward the old hermit's stable. He emerged in a second with an angry cry on his lips.

"Just as I thought," he exclaimed, "they're gone!"

"Gone!"

"Yes, the ponies and our rifles."

"Great Scott, what will we do?"

"Get away from here as soon as possible. If I don't miss my guess, that leathery-skinned old squeedink has recognized those ponies and started back to Black Ramon with them."

"Good gracious, that means----"

"That we'll have the whole boiling of them round us if we don't skeedaddle out of here pretty jerky. We lost a lot of valuable time getting that door down."

"But we've no ponies; how are we to travel on foot and keep ahead of them?"

"Well, there's that old one-and-a-half-eared mule out there. I reckon we won't be busting no code of ethics by borrering her. I'll get a saddle on her, and you just fill your pockets with whatever you can find in the way of grub, then we'll start."

In a few minutes all was ready, and the old mule, with a ragged saddle on her angular back, stood waiting with a drooping head. Pete swung himself into the saddle, and Jack, being lighter, leaped up behind, holding on to the cantle.

"All right, conductor. Ring the bell and we'll start this here trolley," grinned Pete, digging his feet into the old mule's ribs. She started off at a gait surprising in such a disreputable-looking animal.

"Well, we've got a start they never calculated on us getting," grunted Pete as they loped along. "If only our luck holds to the end, we'll beat them out yet."

The old mule plunged upward along the cañon, clambering over the rough ground with remarkable agility. One of the first things that Pete had taken care to do was to leave the trail in a rocky spot, where no telltale hoofmarks would show, and his course was now along the bottom of the gorge, where a small watercourse trickled.

"Well, we won't want for water, anyhow," he observed, with some satisfaction.

It grew dark rapidly, and nightfall found them in a wild part of the gorge with the main crests of the range reared forbiddingly above them. So far there had been no sign of pursuit, and both fugitives were beginning to hope that they had got clear away, when from far down the cañon they heard cries and shouts, and, looking back, saw a bright glare of light.

"Well, there they are," grinned Pete, "in a fine way of taking, I guess, over the fire."

"The fire," echoed the boy, puzzled; "is that what the glare is?"

"Yep," snorted Pete, "I reckoned we'd have to pay that old scallawag out some way, so I just scattered a few hot embers about his hut before we vamoosed. I reckon by the looks of things they're catching up. Guess he's sorry he left us now."

"Pete, you're incorrigible," exclaimed Jack, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry at the cow-puncher's wanton act. True, it was wrong to burn down the old hermit's hut, but still the lone dweller of the cañon had betrayed their trust by an act of base treachery.

"I guess the books are about balanced," said Jack to himself.

Aloud he asked:

"Do you think they'll come on after us to-night, Pete?"

"Reckon not," rejoined the cow-puncher; "if they do, 'twon't do them no good. We've killed out the trail in this watercourse, and even if they have the dogs they couldn't pick us up. Wisht we had a couple of good rifles. We could lay up there on the hillside as snug as you please and pick 'em out as we chose."

It soon became manifest that they could not travel much farther that night. Not only was the old mule giving signs of fatigue, but it was so dark that, as Pete said, they "ran a chance of breaking their necks any minute." They were now high on the eastern slope of the cañon, and a tumble down its steep sides might have had disastrous results. They therefore decided to camp where they were.

Making camp was a simple matter with their scant paraphernalia. The old saddle had a coil of rope attached to its horn, and this cord was made fast to the old mule's neck. Neither of the campers was thirsty, so after eating some of the provisions Jack had hastily stuffed in his pocket, and which consisted mostly of a pasty, sticky corn paste, Pete made their bed.

Rolled in the ragged saddle blanket, with the saddle for pillow, and the stars above them, the wanderers slept as peacefully as if in their beds at home, although their couch was a rocky one. Before turning in, Pete took the precaution of wrapping the old mule's rope around his wrist, so that in the event of a surprise during the night she would give the alarm by tugging on it.

"Isn't she liable to start off home without ceremony?" asked Jack as he observed this.

"Not she," rejoined Pete wisely; "she's too tired to move a step."

All of which goes to show, as we shall see later, that it takes a wise cow-puncher to know a mule.

It was about midnight that Jack was awakened by a most unearthly yell. He sprang to his feet, with every nerve in his body tingling, and the first thing he observed was that Pete was missing. The cause of absence was not long in doubt. A sudden fit of homesickness had seized the old one-eared mule in the night, and she had started without delay for the hermit's hut, dragging with her the luckless Pete. The cow-puncher's yells filled the cañon.

Small wonder was it that he cried out in anguish, for the side of the hill down which the old mule was loping was as steep as the side of a house, and plentifully bestrewn with rocks, inter-grown with rough scraggly brush. Jack was fully dressed, just as he had lain down, and he leaped off into the darkness in the direction in which Pete's hideous yells and the clattering of the old mule's hoofs proclaimed them to be. But before he reached them, the abrupt descent of the mountain by Pete had ceased. The old mule had been halted in midcareer by the rope becoming entangled in a small, low-growing piñon, and she had been checked as effectively as if a hand had been laid on the rope.

"Here, for goodness sake, get me cut loose from this she fiend incarnate," begged Pete, as he heard Jack coming toward him.

"Well, do make less noise, then," said Jack, who could hardly keep from laughing at Pete's doleful tones.

"Noise," groaned Pete, "it's a wonder I'm not making the all-sorrowfulest caterwauling you ever heard. If there's a sound bit of skin on my poor carcass, I'll give you a five-dollar gold piece for it, and no restrictions as to size, either. Ouch!"

He gave a painful exclamation as he rose to his feet.

"Consarn that mule," he grumbled, "I'm going to get me a good thick club, and her and me will argue this thing out. Look at that, will you, for pure cussedness."

No wonder the bruised and battered Pete was indignant. The runaway mule stood only a few paces from them, unconcernedly cropping some sort of prickly bush, which no animal but a mule would have had the courage to tackle.

"Mule's ain't human, as I've often observed," grunted Pete, in intense disgust; "they're a mixture of combustibles, hide and devilment, with a dash of red fire thrown in."

"Well, why did you tie the rope round your wrist, then?" asked Jack, untangling the tether, and starting to lead the mule back.

"Don't ask me any questions," roared Pete, rubbing himself affectionately, "or if you do, ask me why I was ever a consarned, peskyfied, locoed idjut enough to cross that bridge."

A sudden disturbance in the brush below them caused them to start and listen intently.

The noise sounded like several animals of some sort making a kind of stampede through the brush.

"The Mexicans!" was the first thought that flashed through Jack's mind. But the next instant he knew it was impossible that it could be they.

"Those are no Mexicans, boy," whispered Pete.

"What was it, then?"

"Hold on, thar, or I'll shoot," unwisely yelled Pete. Unwisely, because they, neither of them, had a weapon.

In reply a bullet sang past his ear, fired, judging by the momentary flash, from the direction of the trampling animals.

"Waal, what do you know about that?" grunted Pete amazedly. "This valley must be full of enemies of our'n."

"Better not do any more shouting," warned Jack.

"No, I reckon not. Wow! I heard the bees sing that time, all right."

"What do you suppose it could have been? Not Mexicans, certainly."

"Nope. At least I don't think so. Maybe Injuns."

"Indians!"

"Yes, every once in a while they stampede off the reservation and roam around promiscuous. But anyhow, whatever it was, or whoever it is, he's more scairt of us than we are of him. Hark!"

There was a mighty clattering of dislodged stones and rustling of brush coming out of the darkness, and diminishing in loudness every minute.

"Git thar, Fox! You ornery son of a side-winding rattler!" they heard an angry voice grunt under its breath, from the direction of the retreat.

"A white man, by Jee-hos-o-phat!" exclaimed Pete, his face lighting up. "Now what in thunder is he doing up here?"