Part 17 (2/2)
Only the dawn grey saved my boys from breaking both their necks in that deep gap, but now they had got to lose the sheltering darkness, their horses were mighty near finished, and three big outfits of riders were closing down all round them. Jim looked up the sky to see if there were miracles a-coming, for nothing less was going to be much use. Then the Naco people came whirling down on the right, and the black arroyo lay broad across their hopes, so they swung north to look for a crossing, and were thrown right out of the hunt.
Presently soon my youngsters had another big stroke of luck, because the Bisley crowd missed aim, and had to swing in behind with the men from Grave City.
”Jim,” says Curly, ”has they closed in yet?”
”Our wind is covering all three outfits now.”
Then came a yell from behind, for in the dawn the hunters had caught sight of their meat.
Now close ahead loomed something white like a ghost, and Jim let out a screech as it reared up against him sudden. As he s.h.i.+ed wide and spurred, he saw the ghost some better--a limewashed monument, the boundary mark of old Mexico.
”Saved!” he yelled. ”They can't follow beyond the Line.”
”They cayn't, but they will,” says Curly; ”fire the gra.s.s!”
Jim grabbed a hair from the buckskin's mane, took matches from his wallet and bound them into a torch, struck a light to the tip, and held it in his paws against the roaring wind. Then he made s.h.i.+ft to swing himself down till the long gra.s.s brushed his fingers. He dropped his torch beside a greasewood bush, and cantered on with Curly knee to knee.
That flicker in the long gra.s.s grew to a blazing star, spread with the flaws of the wind, swayed its small tongues to lick new clumps and pa.s.s the word to others just beyond. The bush blazed up with a roar as only greasewood can, and flung its burning sticks upon the storm, so that the fire spread swift as a man could run over acres of greasewood. To the east was mesquite bush, which burns like gun-cotton in a gale of wind.
But now the draught of the fire had made that gale a scarlet hurricane with the stride of a running horse, which flushed the flying cloud wrack overhead, and made red day along the mountain flanks.
I reckon that if I'd happened with that outfit of hunters, I should have known enough to bear east and circle round the blaze without loss of time; but the leaders saw the burning mesquite grove, and tried to swing west of trouble. There the arroyo barred them, and before they won to the other horn of the fire their horses had gone loco, refusing to face the heat. Anyways, they stampeded with their riders, and I reckon those warriors never stopped to look back until they had thrown themselves safe beyond the railroad. If they had come out for a man-hunt, they got that liberal and profuse beyond their wildest dreams.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FRONTIER GUARDS
Well up to windward of the range fire, that fool horse Jones came to a finish sudden all a-straddle, swaying, nose down, and blood a-dripping.
So far Curly had just stayed in the saddle from force of habit, but when the usual motion stopped between his knees he surely forgot to be alive any more, and dropped like a shot bird to gra.s.s. As for Jim, he was too stiff to dismount, but the buckskin mare lay down with him complete; so he rolled from the saddle, and managed to stagger around. He uncinched Jones' saddle, eased his mouth of the bit, loosed the mare's girth as she lay, then knelt by Curly feeling him over for wounds. He didn't know until then that Curly had a bullet in the right arm; but all that side was in a mess of dry blood, and when he cut away the coat it began to spurt. He plugged up the hole, made a bandage with his handkerchief, twisted it up with a stick until the blood quit coming, then rolled himself down, dead asleep beside his partner.
The big gale roared overhead; a haze of flying dust; the country to the north was a flaming volcano; the sky was a whirl of clouds, all painted purple and crimson with the daybreak; but my kids and their horses cared nothing more at all for storm or fire. Then the skyline along the east began to glow white-hot, burned by the lift of the sun; and stark black against that rode a bunch of hors.e.m.e.n. They were coming from La Morita Custom House to find out what sort of felons had set the range on fire.
They were Mexican Frontier Guards.
Their lieutenant told me afterwards that when they saw the played-out horses and those two poor kids who lay between them, they thought the whole outfit must be dead. They reckoned up Jim for one of their countrymen, and surely did everything in their power to act merciful.
Firing the range comes pretty near being a serious thing, causing inconvenience to cattle, apt to annoy settlers by burning their homes and cooking their wives and families. Naturally that sort of play is discouraged, and the Frontier Guards was only acting up to their lights in arresting my youngsters. Still, they didn't act haughty and oppressive, but sent a rider off to fetch their waggon for the prisoners, and meanwhile made camp and boiled them a drink of coffee.
The _teniente_ woke them up, gave them their coffee and told them their sins, while the rest of the greasers, talking all at once, explained what their officer meant. As to Jim and Curly, they were interested in that coffee a whole lot, and ready to excuse the Frontier Guards; but the worries and troubles of a pack of greasers only made them tired; so they told them not to fuss, and slept through the rest of the sermon.
When they woke up again, they found themselves in prison.
That calaboose at La Morita is built of the usual adobe, sun-dried brick, with a ceiling of cactus sticks laid on beams to carry a couple of feet of solid earth. A 'dobe house is the next thing to comfort in a climate like ours, where the sun will scorch a man's hide worse than boiling water. The Frontier Guards had laid clean hay on the dirt floor, and hung an _olla_ of water to cool in the draught, but when my boys woke up they were sure puzzled, for the night had fallen, the moon was not yet stirring, and the place was surely dark as a wolf's mouth. Stiff and sore from hard riding, Jim got up to grope in the darkness, ravaging around in search of grub. He found hay and water, but nothing else, so thought he must have been changed into a horse, and set up a howl for corn. Then he attracted Curly's notice by tumbling over his bed.
”How many laigs have yo' got?” says Curly, ”'cause that's ample. Catch me some water.”
Jim reached down the hanging jar, and Curly drank. ”I been waiting hours for that,” says he; ”now sluice my arm.”
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