Then followed a magnificent exhibition of man versus horse. And it was not without its watchers – this Homeric struggle for supremacy between maddened man and maddened beast.
Jack, from his hiding place in the ferns and brush, heard the sounds and almost unconsciously he drew closer to the scene of the combat. Parting the ferns he peered through cautiously, and then was held spellbound.
If he were to have been captured for it the next instant he could not have withdrawn his gaze from the spectacle.
With clenched teeth and face that was yellow and drawn with rage, Ramon plied quirt and spur. The big rowelled instruments he wore tore great streaks in the black’s glossy hide. All the time his quirt fell in a perfect hailstorm of blows about the noble animal’s flanks.
But if Ramon’s rage was impressive from its very vindictiveness, how much more so was the just anger of the big horse.
Its delicately pointed ears were pressed close back to its shapely head, while its eye gleamed whitely. As the big silver-mounted bit of the barbarous Mexican pattern cut and gored its sensitive mouth, the animal champed and snapped, – like a rabid dog, – till its great chest was flecked with blood and foam. But it was unsubdued, as unconquered as its master.
“By George, what a rider!” was the involuntary exclamation of admiration forced from Jack as he watched.
And the next moment.
“Gracious, what a horse!”
Suddenly the black reared straight upward, beating the air with its forelegs. For a breath it swayed and balanced perfectly, and then, losing its equilibrium – perhaps purposely – it fell backward.
A cry of alarm broke, against his will, from Jack’s whitened lips. Ramon’s death seemed certain. But instead of the black crushing his body in its fall, the agile Mexican was out of the saddle with the agility of an eel, and as the black leaped erect once more its master was back in the saddle breathing fresh maledictions and flogging and rowelling more unmercifully than ever.
But from that time on, there was no question but that the animal realized that it had met its match. Its bucks were no longer great, animated, splendid leaps, driven by the force of its powerful muscles. Instead, they were limp and dispirited.
But Ramon seemed bent on thoroughly humiliating the animal. Jack’s blood began to boil as he saw the brutal punishment increasing in violence as the black grew more and more subjugated. Its sunken flanks heaved, its limbs trembled and actual tears rolled down its cheeks; but Ramon still flogged and beat and spurred as furiously as ever.
“Oh, that such a rider should be such a brute!” thought Jack, watching the scene from his place of concealment.
“This has got to stop,” he determined the next instant. So great was his anger at the brutal exhibition that had he had his small rifle he would almost have risked crippling one of the Mexican’s arms or legs in order to end the sickening brutality.
But if Jack had not a rifle, he had another weapon perhaps even more efficacious in his hands. It will be recalled that Jack had performed some remarkable feats of pitching at Stonefell College, notably in the great game between West Point and Stonefell. What more natural then than that he should select from the plenty about him, a small, well-rounded stone, somewhat smaller than a league ball.
Feeling sure that Ramon was too intent on his punishment to notice anything else, Jack stepped boldly to the edge of the little clearing, and with a preliminary twist he sent the stone hurtling straight and true at the head of the black’s tormentor.
Like a tree that has felt the woodsman’s axe, Ramon threw up his hands as the stone struck him, and without a sound pitched out of the saddle, crashing in a heap on the ground.
Jack felt rather alarmed as he saw this. He had not intended to throw quite so hard. For an instant a dreadful fear that he had killed Ramon – rascal though the man was, – clutched at his heart.
Coming boldly out from his place of concealment he hastened to the fallen man’s side.
CHAPTER V
CAUGHT IN A TRAP
But Ramon was not dead, – far from it, in fact. As Jack bent above him he reached back, and with a swift, cat-like motion, whipped out a knife and, balancing it on his palm for the fraction of a second, sent it whistling past the lad’s ear.
Before he could rise the boy was upon him, and for a space of several minutes they struggled on the uneven ground, the exhausted horse looking disinterestedly on. Had it not been for its recent punishment it is likely that the brute might have interfered, for some of the oft told tales along the border concerned the black’s love for its master. But as it was, it made no move, not even when Jack, holding Ramon pinned to the ground with one hand, with the other jerked loose the lasso from the saddle, by its hanging end, and rapidly proceeded to bind the Mexican fast.
“Adios, Ramon!” cried the boy, as, his task completed, he turned away.
Had the black horse not been so completely worn out it is likely that Jack might have commandeered him. But as it was, he deemed it wisest not to bother with him.
And so he slipped away, leaving the exhausted horse and helpless master side by side.
After traveling some distance Jack began to realize that his woodcraft was seriously at fault somewhere. He had intended to make a detour which would bring him around the outlaw’s camp and enable him to reach their own bivouac unobserved.
Instead of this, as he now began to dread, he had apparently headed altogether in the wrong direction, for the country into which he emerged after traversing the fern-brake and scrub-coppice, was of a kind distinctly foreign to anything they had as yet encountered in Mexico.
Almost bare of vegetation, it was riven and split as if by volcanic action. The earth was of a reddish color, as if it had been seared by elemental fires, and the beetling cliffs rose threateningly on either side.
“What a gloomy place,” thought Jack, “it reminds me of that valley in which Sinbad the Sailor found the snakes and the diamonds. Wonder if there are any diamonds here? Tell you what, though, I’d give a whole handful of the gems right now for a good square meal.”
The thought of the appetizing breakfast which had been preparing when he left camp made Jack hungrier than ever, a fact which he had not had time heretofore to realize in the rapid march of events which had occurred since his departure.
The Border Boy looked about him carefully. He realized that if not actually lost, he was in grave danger of being so. The thought quickened his faculties and he set about gauging his position in real earnest. Having, by the aid of the sun, calculated the direction in which the Border Boys’ camp ought to lie, Jack struck out for it. His way led him across a corner of The Baked Land, as he had mentally christened the dreary valley.
He was hastening forward when, suddenly, as he stepped into what seemed a patch of ferns and high grass, the solid ground seemed to vanish from under his feet.
Straight down shot the Border Boy, clutching desperately, as he fell, at projecting rocks and bits of growth; but none of these remained firm in his grasp.
For twenty feet or more the boy fell, and then suddenly his drop was arrested by a heap of dried vegetation at the bottom of the pit or crevasse into which his hurrying feet had led him.
So well had the deceitful growth on the edges of this gulf hidden it, that it was small wonder that Jack, in his haste, had not perceived it. It was dark with a gloomy, damp sort of dusk in the bottom of the crevasse, only a dim, greenish light filtering in from the top.
The reaction from his hopes of a few minutes before almost unnerved the lad for the nonce, but presently he marshalled his faculties and set himself to the task of ascertaining exactly what had happened to him, and what means of escape presented itself.
At a single glance he could see that there was no hope of getting out of the subterranean trap by means of climbing up the walls. Although they were rough and might