CHAPTER XIX.

JIM HICKS, PROSPECTOR.

The sharp eyes of Coyote Pete were not long in discovering the cause of the startling interruption to the adulation of Maud.

Through a clump of brush some distance above the trail, a strange, wild face was peering at them. Yet, despite its tangle of beard, and the battered hat which crowned its tangled locks, the countenance was a kindly one, and there was friendliness in its blue eyes. Above all, it was the face of an American. Pete, and Jack, too, for that matter, would have thrown themselves rejoicingly on the neck of the most disreputable of their countrymen, if they had happened to meet him at that moment.

"Traveling?" inquired the stranger, coming out from his concealment and disclosing a well-knit body dressed in plainsman's garb. The butt of a revolver glinted suggestively on his left thigh.

"Reckon so," rejoined Pete.

"Whar frum?"

"South."

"Whar to?"

"North."

"Ain't very communicative, be yer, stranger?"

"Wa'al, you see, we ain't had a regular introduction," rejoined Pete, with range humor, a grin spreading over his countenance.

"My name's Jim Hicks; I'm prospecting up through this yer God-forsaken place."

"Mine's Peter Aloysius Archibald De Peyster," rejoined Coyote Pete, and, although he then gasped in amazement, Jack was later to learn that this was the redoubtable cow-puncher's real name. In fact, he had had more than one fight on account of it.

"Don't laugh," he warned.

"Not a snicker," was the reply, "but that sure is a fancy name, stranger. Sounds like a Christmas tree, all lights, and tinsel, and glitter."

"Humph," rejoined the cow-puncher, glancing sharply at the other, but, perceiving no sign of amusement on that leathern countenance, he went on, "and this is my young friend, Jack Merrill, the son of Merrill, the cattle-man."

"Say," burst out Jack, who had been doing some thinking, "are you J. H.?"

"That is my usual initials," rejoined the prospector, bending a keen glance on the boy.

"Ho--ho--ho!" laughed Pete, "I reckon we crossed your trail to-day. Did you mislay a wash-pan?"

"Why, yep," rejoined the other, a rather embarrassed look coming over his face, and a bit of red creeping up under the tan, "you see, I was camped down the trail last night, when the all-firedest thing happened that I ever bumped into."

"What was it?" asked Jack mischievously, scenting here an explanation of the occurrences of the night.

"Why, I was sound asleep down by the creek, when, all of a sudden, I hear'n a fearful racket above me. I looked up and I seen a devil with red eyes and a blue tail, all surrounded by blue fire, coming toward me, and----"

"Hold on, stranger--wait a minute. I ain't through yit. Wa'al, sir, I out with my pepper box and let fly, but the critter, whatever it was, jes' giv' the awfulest laugh I ever heard, and vanished in a cloud of blue smoke."

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" laughed Jack, while Pete joined in the merriment, holding his sides.

The prospector looked at them suspiciously.

"Why--why--why," gasped Pete, "barrin' the red fire and the trimmings, I reckon your devil was jes' our old mule, Maud."

"That onery, one-eared critter yonder!" yelled the prospector, "that perambulating, four-legged accumulation of cats'-meat scare me out of two years' growth! Stan' aside, strangers----"

"Why, what are you going to do?" exclaimed Jack in a somewhat alarmed tone, as the prospector's hand flew to his six-shooter.

"Jes' ventilate the promiscuous disposition of that animal of your'n, stranger."

As he spoke, he coolly raised his pistol, preparatory to sweeping it down and firing point-blank at poor Maud. But Coyote Pete was on him with a wild yell.

"Here, here, none of that in this camp, stranger," he bellowed, as his mighty arms bore the astonished prospector to the ground, and they rolled over and over; "ef you've got any nuggets lyin' loose you don't want, give 'em to us to decorate that noble creature, but you'll shoot me afore you shoot Maud."

As for Jack, after his first alarm, all he could do was to roar with laughter at the two big Westerners rolling about on the ground, and filling the air with vigorous expletives.

"Here, here, get up," he cried at length. "Aren't you ashamed of yourselves?"

The two stopped their struggle for a moment and scrambled to their feet.

"I'll take back my remarks about your mule," said the prospector, apparently unruffled by the sudden strenuous interlude.

"And I'll withdraw my objection to you on account of that bullet you fired at us last night," said Pete solemnly.

"Accepted," said the ranger with equal gravity, "and now, if you two fellers feels like scoffin'----"

"Scoffing?" said Jack. "I thought we'd had enough of that."

"He means eating," chuckled Pete. "What a question to ask!"

"Wa'al, then, I'm camped about a quarter of a mile frum here, and will be glad to have your company. I come down to find out what was the matter, when I hear'n that mule critter of yours a-singin' once more. Glad to have met congenial company."

"We'll have to bring the mule," said Jack.

"All right. So long as she don't fight with my outfit, I've no objection," rejoined the prospector; "but come on, or that rabbit stew will be getting burned."

"Rabbit stew!" exclaimed Coyote Pete. "Oh, I never thought to hear them words again."

Rapidly they retraced their steps, leading Maud by her hitching rope. Soon they reached a small branch path, which they had not noticed on their way up. It led back into the brush where Jim Hicks, it appeared, had camped. As they neared it, a savory odor of rabbit stew became apparent. Pete sniffed ecstatically.

"Say, stranger," he asked in a trembling voice, "is they--is they onions in that stew, or does my nose deceive me?"

"Mr. De Peyster," rejoined the prospector, "your organ of smelling is kerrict, sir. There is four of the finest Bermudas obtainable in that rabbit stew."

"Hold me," murmured Pete to Jack, a sudden look of lassitude coming over his weather-beaten face.

"Why, why, what's the matter?" exclaimed Jack in some real alarm.

"I--I think I'm going to faint, and I forgot to bring my smellin' salts," grinned Pete, favoring the boy with a portentous wink.

The formality of the West did not permit Jim Hicks to ask any questions of his guests. In fact, in that section of the country such a procedure would have been adjudged a terrible breach of good manners. On the border every man's business is his own, and no questions asked.

When, however, three or more helpings of rabbit stew had become a part of Coyote Pete, and an equal number was being assimilated into the person of Jack Merrill, the cow-puncher took advantage of the temporary absence of Jim Hicks--who had gone to see after his ponies--to ask Jack if he thought it wise to tell the prospector some of their story.

"I certainly do," replied Jack. "He is a queer character, certainly, but under all his peculiarities he seems to be shrewd and kindly."

"That's what I think, too," agreed Pete. "He may be able to help us."

After Coyote Pete and Jim Hicks had their pipes lighted, therefore, for the prospector carried a good supply of "Lone Jack," Coyote Pete began. The prospector listened with many exclamations of surprise to their story, till they reached the part concerning the old Mission of San Gabriel. Then he jumped to his feet, and, dashing his pipe to the ground, applied a few vigorous epithets to Black Ramon and his gang.

"That's the bunch of coyotes that drove me out of there just as I was about to make my fortune," he cried.

"Drove you out of there?"

"Make yer fortune?" cried his two puzzled listeners.

"Yep; listen," and Jim Hicks told them substantially the story, which we have already perused in his notebook, so providentially delivered into the hands of the prisoners of the old church. The man who willed it to him was a dying recluse he had aided.

"And there the book is, written in with onion juice stuffed in a cranny of the wall for any one's finding and nobody's reading," chuckled the prospector in conclusion. "It was the only thing I could do. You see, I didn't know whether those greasers would catch me or not, so I concluded the best thing to do would be to take no chances, and hide it."

"You think you can find it again?" asked Jack, fascinated by the old prospector's strange story.

"Why, I dunno, son. You see, I was in such a hurry to get away when I heard them fellers coming, that I just stuffed it in a crack in the wall. If they got inquisitive they could easy get it out, but they wouldn't suspect nothing, for the book looked blank."

"But how did you escape without their seeing you?"

"Ah, you've got to trust an old borderer for that," grinned Jim Hicks. "You see, when I got near the church, thinks I to myself, 'now, Jim Hicks, you don't want to burn your bridges behind you' so I just left my pony hidden in a little arroyo about half a mile away. When I heard them coming by the front of the place, I slipped out the other side and into the brush. After a lot of wrigging about through the scrub, I reached my pony, and rode back up here to where I had my outfit cached."

"Then you don't know whether there's treasure there or not?" asked Jack.

"Wa'al, there's treasure there all right, no doubt o' that. That Spanish fellow--I told you how I helped him when he was dying--swore he didn't lie to me, and I believe him. But he hinted at there being some sort of difficulty in the way of getting at it. The breath of death, I think he called it. Guess he meant the greasers' garlic."

"I guess so," responded Jack; "how I wish that we could go with you right now and explore the secret tunnel."

"Wa'al, we've got to get in communication with the ranch first, and then we can get the greaser troops and get after that band of scallywags," said Pete.

"And we must be two days' ride from it now," sighed Jack. "In the meantime, what will be happening to the others?"

"That's the trouble," mused Pete, "if only we'd had a chance, we might have struck out and got the troops ourselves. But the greasers cut us off, and we're of more use here, even as out of the way as we are, than we would be in Black Ramon's clutches."

"Tell yer what," exclaimed Jim Hicks suddenly, "you don't hev ter ride all ther way to ther ranch."

"What's that?" asked Pete.

"No. I mean what I say. Use the telephone."

"What?"

Jack and Pete looked at the eccentric prospector as if they thought he had gone crazy in good earnest.

"Oh, I'm not locoed. Has your father got talk bo' at the ranch, boy?"

"Yes," rejoined Jack.

"Then it's easy."

The prospector spoke with such easy confidence that, in spite of themselves, Jack and Pete began to pay serious attention to his words.

"Oh, yes; I suppose we jes' climb a sugar-pine and asked Central ter give us Grizzly one twenty-three?" inquired Pete, sardonically.

"Nope," rejoined the miner, quite unruffled; "but hain't yer never thought that there's a telephone at the big water dam?"

"Thunders of Vesuvius, that's right!" exclaimed Pete, leaping to his feet and executing a jig.

"How do we get there, though?" asked Jack. "We must be miles from it."

"Not so very far. I know a trail across the mountain that'll get us there a whole lot sooner than you'd think possible."

"Oh-didy-dd diddy-dum; Dum-dididdy-dee!" hummed Pete cutting all sorts of capers, "oh, now won't we get after those greasers."

"When can we start?" asked Jack.

"Sun up to-morrow."

"Good. I won't rest easy till I know that we're on the way to save Ralph and the others."