But even as he was making his avalanche-like slide down the steep bank. Jack’s active mind was at work.
The instant his feet touched solid ground he sprang upright with a terrific yell: —
“Yee-ow-ow-ow!”
“Todos Santos! It is El Diablo,” shrilled some of the Mexicans. But Ramon, superstitious as he was, was not to be thus easily alarmed.
“It’s a man!” he shouted, and then the next instant: —
“Santa Maria! It’s one of the Border Boys!”
But so quickly had Jack moved that by the time Ramon, the first to regain his wits, had recovered from his surprise, the lad was already among the Mexicans’ horses which were tethered at some little distance. Jack’s quick eye had noted that one of them was saddled and bridled. Like a flash he was in the saddle, and plying the quirt with might and main. Behind him came a fusilade of shots, and he could feel the bullets whistle as he crouched low on his stolen steed’s neck. But he had assumed, and the event proved correctly, that the Mexicans would not risk killing one of their horses.
“Don’t hit the horse!” the fleeing boy heard Ramon shout, as he dashed off. He really had no idea in what direction he was going, but flogging his mount with unmerciful ferocity for the kind-hearted Jack, the lad made all speed from the vicinity of the Mexican camp.
“Hooray, I’ve shaken them off, anyhow,” he thought to himself, as, after ten minutes or so of hard riding he heard the shouts and cries of the Mexicans grow faint behind him.
But in this assumption Jack had reckoned without his host, in the shape of Black Ramon’s famous sable steed.
As he drew rein he heard distinctly the sound of a horse coming toward his halting place at a terrific gait. No other horse than Black Ramon’s could have kept up such a speed over such ground, and Jack, with a sinking heart, realized that if he did not act quickly he was likely to fall into the outlaw’s hands once more.
The spot where he had halted was a small rocky eminence surrounded by the luxuriant fern and scrub growth which clothed the rugged floor of the canyon.
To turn his panting animal and head off into the dense growth was the work of an instant. Hardly had he vanished, however, before the fern parted once more and disclosed the form of Ramon’s black horse with the outlaw himself upon his glossy back.
Like Jack, Ramon halted as he reached the little eminence, and listened intently. Despite the speed he had made in pursuit, the black showed hardly a trace of fatigue. His finely carved nostrils dilated a little more than usual and his large, intelligent eyes shone more brightly perhaps, but that was all. He pricked his delicate ears and seemed to be as keenly on the alert as his master, whose face, just now, wore an expression of almost diabolic rage and baffled fury.
In the meantime, Jack was loping along at as fast a pace as he dared to go. The ground, as has been said, was rough and stony to a degree, – the worst sort of going for one who wished to conceal the sound of his advance. But there was no help for it; press on the boy must, or fall into the hands of men whom he knew would give him short shrift indeed.
“If ever this old plug stumbles – ”
Such was the thought in Jack’s mind when the exact event he had dreaded transpired.
His purloined animal gave a plunge forward as its feet caught in a rock and a tangle of fern.
The next instant Jack was shot like a projectile through space, while the horse, with an almost human groan of pain, sank to the ground. At the same time Ramon, halted on the little hill, caught the sound of the crash.
A cruel smile curled his thin lips, exposing his long yellow teeth – almost like those of some beast of prey. With a whispered word to his black horse the Mexican outlaw plunged into the brush in the direction of the sound which had just reached his ears.
CHAPTER IV
A BATTLE ROYAL
Jack struggled to his feet and surveyed the scene of his disaster with dismay. A brief examination of his fallen horse told him that it would be impossible to continue his flight on the animal. Its knees were cut and bruised, and it lay with an expression of dumb suffering in its eyes that touched the sorely-tried lad’s heart. If he had not dropped his little rifle in the excitement of his escape he would have despatched the creature, – risking the chance of detection from the sound of the report.
“Well, here’s where I take to Shank’s mare,” murmured Jack, setting off once more, – when something whistled through the air and settled about his neck in a stifling coil.
It was a rawhide lasso, hurled with deadly accuracy by Ramon, who had entered the glade just as Jack arose from his examination of the fallen horse.
Before the boy had time to realize what had occurred, he was yanked from his feet and thrown violently to the ground for the second time.
“So I’ve got you fast and tight, at last, eh,” sneered Ramon vindictively, gazing down from his great horse at the crestfallen, dust-covered boy.
“Well, my young senor,” he continued, with a vicious intonation, “I can promise you that this time you will not escape so easily. This will be a treat for the boys.”
Jack answered nothing. He struggled to rise but the rope was given a jerk by his captor which brought him to the ground once more. He could almost have cried with humiliation. At the moment this was his overmastering feeling. Of fear he felt little, but he would have given a lot just then to stand up with Black Ramon in a twenty-four-foot ring!
Having “thrown” poor Jack very much as he might have done a refractory calf, the outlaw turned his attention to the injured horse.
“So you have ruined one of our horses, too, you Yankee pig,” he snarled; “well, it only makes one more score to settle up with you.”
He drew one of his big revolvers from its chased leather holster, and carefully aiming it, shot the mortally injured animal between the eyes. The creature gave a convulsive shudder and straightened out, – dead. Without another word Ramon swung his black around, and before he could make a move Jack found himself being dragged over the rough ground at a swift pace. Within a few yards his side was bruised and cut, and the clothing torn from him.
“Great heavens, if this keeps up I shall be unable to move hand or foot,” thought Jack in dismay.
For a moment his heart failed him, and then he suddenly bethought himself of his knife. To reach it in his side pocket – for his arms were partially free, – was the work of an instant, and with one quick slash he cut the rawhide that bound him.
Released of its burden thus suddenly, the sure-footed black lost its footing and almost stumbled.
“Diablo!” Jack heard Ramon shrill out as the Border Boy gave one quick leap into the dense woods.
When Ramon looked around there was not a trace of the lad he had had at the end of his lariat. Instead, a broken end of the rope dangled on the ground, its ends frayed out.
“Maledictions!” he yelled, all the fury of his Latin blood boiling to the surface in an ungovernable flood. “That cursed gringo pup has fooled me once more.”
In one of those meaningless frenzies of rage into which his countrymen are apt to fall when thwarted in anything, Ramon began to vent his rage on the first animate object to hand. This was the black horse. On the beautiful creature’s shiny coat the cruel blows of the Mexican’s lariat fell furiously, raising great welts across the glossy surface.
For an instant the black quivered and stood motionless. The suddenness of the attack dazed it. But the next moment, its rage, – as ungoverned as that of its master, surged up in its equine heart. With an angry squeal it gave