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CHAPTER III.
A RACE FOR LIFE

Fast as they raced on, Jack and the cow-puncher seemed to gain on the flying Petticoats with aggravating slowness.

"Consarn that mare, she's plumb locoed, I reckon!" growled Bud, as they rocketed along, flogging their ponies to renewed efforts with their heavy quirts.

"She runs like a quarter horse!" gasped Jack, his mouth full of alkali dust; for he had no neck handkerchief to pull up over his mouth, vaquero style.

But with their splendid mounts they were bound to gain on the suddenly crazed Petticoats, and gradually they drew so close that all three riders were blanketed by the same cloud of dust.

Behind them came a second great cloud, in which rode a score or more of riders from Maguez who had hastily mounted and galloped out to see the fun as soon as they heard there was a runaway.

"The canal!" shouted Jack suddenly.

A wandering breeze for a second swept aside the dust cloud before them, and showed the fresh, raw wound gaping in the level surface of the desert. It was fully thirty feet wide, and as the canal was a new ditch, its sides were almost as steep as a wall.

Bud Wilson said nothing, but set his lips grimly. With an imperceptible movement of his wrist, he gathered his trailing loop into the air and began to whirl it above his head, first slowly and then faster and faster. The rawhide loop opened out till it was ten feet or more in circumference.

"Now!" he yelled, and at the same instant the released loop went swirling through the air.

"Yip-yip!" yelled Jack.

Bud had won proudly many a prize for roping, and was the most expert man with the lariat in his part of the West. Had he wished, he could have roped the flying Petticoats by the heels. But to have done so would have been to have brought the crazed pony down with a crash, and probably have seriously injured, if not killed, her rider.

Swish!

The great loop settled as accurately as if hands had guided it about the maddened pony's neck. Bud took a twist of his end round the saddle horn and checked the calico.

"Got her!" screamed Jack. "Yi-hi!"

But there came a sudden shout of dismay from Bud.

The calico's foot had caught in a gopher hole, and over he went, turning almost a complete somersault.

Jack gave a shout of horror as he saw the catastrophe. He feared Bud had been killed, but the lithe bronco buster was up in a second, stumbling toward his fallen horse.

But the rope did not prove equal to the sudden strain put upon it by the collapse of the calico. The instant the pony had fallen, of course its full weight had come on the rawhide, instead of there being, as Bud had planned, a gradual strangling down of the runaway. It had been, in effect, a tug of war between the flying Petticoats and the suddenly checked calico.

Crack!

The rope twanged taut as a stretched fiddle string and parted with a snap just as Bud reached back into the hip of his leathern chaperaros for his Colt.

He had determined to shoot the runaway and risk disabling Ralph, rather than have the pony take the twenty-foot plunge over the brim of the canal. But at the moment his finger pressed the trigger there came a shout from Jack, who was now only a few paces behind Petticoats. The boy's hastily thrown lariat had missed altogether.

Before their horrified eyes, the runaway buck-skin and her rider the next instant plunged in one confused heap over the bank of the canal and vanished from sight.

Jack was within a breath of following them over the brink, but in the nick of time he wheeled the carefully trained Firewater round on his haunches and averted a second calamity.

Controlling his half-maddened steed, the boy pressed to the edge of the canal. The bank was new and smooth, and as steep as the roof of a house. Ralph and his pony had rolled over and over down this place in one inextricable heap. But by the time Jack reached the edge of the steep bank, Ralph had kicked free of the big, clumsy Mexican stirrups and was struggling in the water.

The flood was rushing along in a yellow, turbid swirl. There had been a freshet in the mountains a few days before, and to relieve the pressure on the land company's dam up there, the spillways had been opened to their capacity. The canal was carrying the great overflow. It tore along between the high, steep banks like a mill race.

"The flood gates!" came a frenzied shout from Bud. He pointed westward.

In a flash Jack realized that the flood gates below must be open, and at the instant of this realization came another thought.

If he did not act and act quickly, Ralph would be carried through the gates to probably certain death.

"Ralph! Ralph!" he shouted, as he gazed down at the brave struggle his chum was making to reach the bank; but the current swept the Eastern boy away from it every time. His pony had gained the bank, and was pawing pitifully at the steep, sandy slope.

It did not need more than a glance to see that Ralph's strength was giving out. He turned up a white, despairing face to Jack, by whose side there now stood Bud Wilson.

"Quick, Jack! Chuck him the rope!" shouted Bud in a tense voice.

Inwardly angry at himself for not having thought of this before, Jack sent his rawhide snaking down the bank. Ralph, his face white and strained above the tearing yellow current, reached out in a desperate effort to clutch the rawhide. Even as his fingers gripped it, however, the current proved too much for him. He was swept away on its white-flecked surface like a bit of drift.

"Ride, boy, ride! We've got to beat him to the sluice and close the gates! It's his only chance!"

It was Bud's voice once more.

Somehow, Jack found himself in the saddle, with Firewater racing under him as that brave little bay had never raced before. Close alongside came Bud, rowelling his bleeding-kneed calico cruelly to keep alongside. Far behind came shouts and yells from the crowd. The buckskin, the cause of all the trouble, managed to clamber to the edge of the stream, where the water was slightly shallower, and was dragged out by ropes. While the race for life swept onward, she stood dripping and shivering on the summit of the bank.

From his flying pony Jack caught occasional glimpses of Ralph in the stream below. The boy was a good swimmer, and now that he was being carried along with the current, instead of fighting it, he was able to keep his head above water most of the time.

"Stick it out, Ralph, old boy!" yelled Jack, as he dashed past the half-drowned lad whom the rapid current was carrying almost as swiftly as the over-run ponies could gallop.

"We'll be in time!" exclaimed Jack, through his clinched teeth. Right ahead of him he saw some grim, gallows-like looking timbers reared up against the sky line, which he knew must mark the sluice.

Hardly had the thought flashed through his mind, when Firewater seemed to glide from beneath him. An instant later Jack found himself rolling over and over on the level plain.

The same accident as had befallen Bud had happened to him. A gopher hole – one of those pests of desert riders – had tripped Firewater and sent his rider sprawling headlong.

"Hurt?"

Bud Wilson, on the calico, drew up alongside Jack, who had struggled to his feet and was looking about in a dazed sort of way.

"No, I'll be all right in a second. But Firewater!"

The bay had risen to his feet, but stood, sweating and trembling, with his head down almost between his knees. He could not have expressed "dead beat" better if he had said it in so many words.

"Blown up!" exclaimed Bud disgustedly.

"What shall we do?" choked out Jack.

"Here, quick! Up behind me!"

Bud reached down a hand, kicked a foot out of his left stirrup, and in a second Jack was swung up behind him and they were off.

"I hope to goodness we strike no more gopher holes," thought the boy, as they raced along, scarcely more slowly than when the plucky little calico had only a single burden to carry. Never had the brave little beast been used more unmercifully. Bud Wilson plied his heavy quirt on the pony's flanks as if he meant to lay the flesh open. To every lash of the rawhide the calico responded bravely, leaping forward convulsively.

"We'll beat him to it!" cried Jack triumphantly, as both riders fairly fell off the spent calico's back at the sluice gates.

"Yep, maybe; but we've got to get 'em closed first!" was Bud's laconic response.

Paying no further attention to the calico – which was too spent, anyhow, to attempt to get away – the two, the man and the boy, ran at top speed across the narrow wooden runway which led to the big wheels by which the gateways of the sluice were raised and lowered.

"If Ralph can only hold out!" gasped Jack, who, far up the stream had espied a small black object coming rapidly toward him, which he knew must be the head of his chum. Ralph was swimming easily, taking care not to wind himself, and looking out for any opportunity which might present itself to reach the bank. No sooner did he attempt to cross the current, however, than the water broke over him as if he had been a broached-to canoe. He confined his efforts, therefore, to keeping his head above water. Of the deadly peril that lay ahead of him he had, of course, no knowledge.

"Hurry, Bud!" cried Jack, in an agony of fear that they would be too late.

"All right now, take it easy, Jack. No use hurrying over this job," replied Bud easily, though his drawn face and the sweat on his forehead showed the agitation under which he was laboring.

"Consarn this thing! How's it work!" he muttered angrily, fiddling with the machinery, which was complicated and fitted with elaborate gears and levers to enable the terrific pressure of the water to be handled more easily.

Beneath their feet the stream – a mad torrent above – developed into a screaming, furious flood at the sluiceway. It shot through the narrow confines at tremendous velocity, shaking and tearing at the masonry buttresses as if it would rip them away.

To Jack's excited imagination, it seemed as if the swollen canal was instinct with life and malevolence, and determined to have human life or property in revenge for its confinement.

Suddenly the boy's eyes fell on something he had not noticed before. Beyond the floodgate the engineers of the irrigation canal, finding that the confinement of the water at the sluiceway tended to make the current too savage for mere sandy walls to hold it, had constructed a tunnel. This expedient had been resorted to only after numerous experimental cement retaining walls had been swept away.

Just beyond the buttresses on the other side of the sluice, the entrance of the tunnel yawned blackly. Like a great mouth it swallowed the raging flood as it swept through the sluice.

"Bud! Bud! Look!" cried Jack, pointing.

"Great jumping side-winders! I forgot the tunnel!" groaned Bud, his usually emotionless face working in his agitation. He had been handling the sluice desperately, but without result.

"We must close the gates within a second, or it will be too late!" shouted Jack, above the roar of the water. Ralph's despairing face was very close now.

"My poor kid, we can't!" wailed Bud.

"Why not?"

"The double-doggoned, dash beblinkered fool as looks after 'em has padlocked 'em, and we can't git 'em closed without a key!"

There was not a second to think.

Even as the discovery that it would be impossible to close the gates was made, Ralph's white face flashed into view almost beneath them.

Bud made a quick snatch at Jack's lariat, which the boy still retained, and snaked it down over the racing water.

"Missed!" he groaned, as Ralph's upturned face was hurried by.

At the same instant there came a splash that the cow puncher heard even above the roar of the water as it tore through its confines.

Bud glanced quickly round.

Where Jack Merrill had stood a moment before were a pair of shoes, the boy's coat and his shirt.

But Jack had gone – he had jumped to Ralph's rescue. As Bud, with a sharp exclamation of dismay, switched sharply round, he was just in time to see the forms of the two boys swallowed in the darkness of the irrigation tunnel.

CHAPTER IV.
THROUGH THE GREAT DARKNESS

Little given to emotion as he was, Bud Wilson reeled backward as if about to fall, and gripped the woodwork of the sluice till the blood came beneath his nails. His eyes were still riveted on the yawning black mouth of the tunnel, and the white-flecked, yellow water racing into it, when the followers of the chase for life came galloping up, leading the ponies of the two boys who had vanished. Blank looks were exchanged as they learned what had happened.

"Not a chance for them." was the consensus of opinion.

Jack Merrill was not a boy who does things without due thought, however. When he had jumped into what seemed certain death he had done so with a definite plan in his head.

In moments of intense mental strain the mind sometimes acts with lightning-like rapidity, and Jack had reasoned like a flash that the irrigation tunnel, being built to convey water to the lands of the Maguez Land and Development Company, probably emerged on their lands, which lay not more than a mile away. Of course, he was not certain of this, but the life of his friend was at stake.

Spent as his chum was, Jack thought Ralph could hardly last throughout the passage of the tunnel, while he, Jack, was fresh, and also a stronger swimmer. These thoughts had all raced through his mind while he kicked off his boots and tugged his shirt over his head.

Then had come the swift flash below him of Ralph's white, imploring face – and the leap.

For a second the current, as he struck it, seemed to be tearing Jack limb from limb. The undertow at the sluice caught him and dragged him down, down, and held him under the turbid water till it seemed that his head must burst open. At last, however, he was shot to the surface like a cork out of a bottle. Joyously he filled his lungs and began swimming.

As his hands struck out they encountered something.

To his intense joy, the next instant Jack found that the current had thrown its two victims, himself and Ralph Stetson, together, and none too soon.

Ralph's eyes were closed, and though he still floated, he seemed incapable of further effort.

Hardly had Jack time to note this, when the light was suddenly blotted out, as if a great curtain had been drawn across the sun. There was a mighty roaring, like that of a thousand huge cataracts in his ears, and he knew that they had entered the water tunnel.

Where would it lead them?

Fortunately, to Jack, fresh as he was, it was not hard to support Ralph, who was almost exhausted, and keep his own head above water at the same time. All that the Western boy now feared was that he would give out before they reached the mouth of the tunnel, or a still more alarming possibility which he hardly dared to dwell on.

What if the tunnel narrowed?

In that case they would be completely submerged, and if the water were enclosed in an iron tube for any great distance, they would inevitably be miserably drowned. The roaring in the tunnel was terrific, but at least it meant one thing, and that was that there was space for sound to reverberate.

On and on they shot, borne like straws on the surface of the mad torrent.

"Does this thing never end, or have they run it clear through to the Pacific?" Jack began to wonder.

It seemed to him they had been traveling for hours. In reality it was only a few minutes.

All at once the boy was hurled against the side of the tunnel, and his feet touched bottom. If it had not been for the velocity of the current, he could have stopped his mad course right there. But the smooth sides of the tube afforded no hand hold, and the rapidity of the stream precluded all idea of attempting to stem the torrent.

But this incident meant to Jack that what he had dreaded most was actually happening.

The subterranean watercourse was narrowing.

Hardly had the thought flashed through his mind before he felt himself sucked by what seemed an invisible arm below the surface. At the same instant Ralph was torn from his arms, and both boys, submerged in a narrow part of the tunnel, were drawn through the dark tube at the speed of an express train.

"The end!" was the thought that flashed through Jack's mind as he felt that his worst apprehension had come true.

But it was not the end, for an instant later he was shot out of the terrible restriction of the narrow irrigation tube into brilliant, blinding sunlight.

"Why, this is a sort of scenic railway!" was the whimsical idea that sped across the boy's mind as he gazed about him. The current had ceased dashing him about, and he was floating in a large pool from which ramifications of sluiceways led in every direction. It was the main retaining basin of the irrigation works. Weakened though he was, Jack found no difficulty in swimming here, and, to his delight, not many feet from him Ralph was still struggling feebly for life. A few strokes brought the boy to his chum's side, and a few strokes more brought them both ashore.

They reached the shallow bank, and Jack laid Ralph down. As he did so, the other boy fainted in good earnest. As Jack bent over his chum he was startled to hear a voice above, and looking up, saw a man in irrigation boots, with a big shovel in his hand, gazing at them curiously.

"Say, are you real, or just what the ground grew?" demanded the stranger. "The advertisements of this land company say their land'll grow anything, but dear land of Goshen! I didn't know it grew boys. That's a crop I've no use for. I've four of my own, and – "

"We're real boys, have nothing to do with any land company, and don't want to, either, after our experience in their water tunnel; and if you can help me get my chum up on the bank and help me revive him, I'll be much obliged," rejoined Jack, all in one breath.

"Well, if you came through that tube, it hasn't hurt your wind any," said the rancher admiringly, dropping his irrigation tool and clambering down the bank. Together he and Jack soon had Ralph stretched out on the warm sandy soil in a big peach orchard, and it was not long before the Eastern boy opened his eyes and looked about him. It was longer, though, before he recollected what had happened. When he did, he knew that it was Jack who must have held him above water at the most critical stage of their wild trip through the tube.

"Thank you, Jack," he said simply.

"Oh, pshaw!" said Jack, reddening. "Didn't you trip up that Mexican and save me getting a bullet through my head?"

At this moment a great shout caused them both to look up. Riding toward them among the trees were a hundred or more mounted men, who broke into cheers as they saw the boys. They were the men who had found Bud Wilson at the sluice gate, and who had at once insisted on his mounting and riding on to the end of the tube to ascertain if by some marvelous chance the boys had survived. When Jack and Ralph stood up – for they had been sitting on the ground, relating to their interested host their adventures – the cheers broke out afresh.

Bud Wilson did not say much. He was not a man of words, but his face expressed what he felt when he exclaimed in a voice that trembled a little in spite of his efforts to keep it steady.

"Waal, I knowed you'd come out of it all right, Jack Merrill."

"I wasn't so sure of it myself, I can tell you!" laughed Jack.

"Say," said Ralph, after the first outburst of questions and answers had subsided, and the boys had had to tell over and over again every detail of their perilous trip, "what I can't understand is why you call that plug," pointing to the now downcast Petticoats, who had been led along with the party, "why you call that animal 'quiet.' What do wild horses do out here, eat you alive or breathe fire?"

"There was a blamed good reason fer Petticoats' ructions," said Bud slowly; and while the eyes of all were fixed intently on him, he held up a red-stained spur.

"A Mexican tickler!" cried Jack.

"That's what, and some one placed it under Petticoats' saddle blanket before the boy mounted," rejoined Bud solemnly.

"Poor beast! No wonder she cut up didoes," said Ralph.

"I should say not. Look at this."

The cowboy lifted the hind flap of Petticoats' saddle, and raising the blankets, showed her back raw and bleeding from the cruel roweling she had received.

"But however did that spur get there?" gasped Ralph.

"Not hard to guess. Can't you imagine?" asked Jack Merrill.

"No, unless – "

"It was that greaser you knocked out," Jack finished for him.

"Consarn the heathenish rattlesnake!" exclaimed the livery stable keeper, who had been among those to follow the wild chase of the canal-carried boys. "I seen him monkeying around your ponies just before he rode out of the barn. If I ever get my hands on him – "

A low growl running through the crowd finished his threat for him. It would have fared badly with Black Ramon had he been there then. But he was far away, riding for the mountains, where he would be safe from the ranchmen's vengeance.

"Waal, we'll run acrost his tracks some day," growled Bud Wilson, "and when we do – Waal, let's talk about the weather."

The boys said nothing, but their faces spoke volumes. By this time, such was the heat of the sun, Ralph's clothes had almost dried out, and he was assured that he would suffer no ill effects from his immersion. As Jack was also almost dry, the rancher, who, it turned out, was a friend of Mr. Merrill's, invited the Agua Caliente party in to have something to eat while their houses were rubbed down and fed. After more congratulations and expressions of wonderment, the horsemen from Maguez rode back to town, and when they had spread the story, the atmosphere of that part of the country would have proved very unhealthful for Black Ramon. Indeed, there was talk of fitting up an expedition to go out and get him, but it was surmised that the Mexican had probably ridden over the border and taken sanctuary in one of his retreats.

"Speaking of irrigation, I'm afraid we are going to have serious trouble with the water some day," Mr. Hungerford, the rancher, remarked as they sat at their meal.

"You mean your orchards will be overflowed?" inquired Jack.

"Oh, no. I'm not afraid of that. That pool in which you landed from the tunnel is drained by a score of small ditches which ought to be capable of handling any overflow. No, the ranches I mean are the ones back under the hills – the cattle ranges. The dam back near Grizzly Pass is none too strong, I am told, and if at any time following a cloudburst the sluiceways should not be opened in time, the retaining wall might burst, and the whole country be swept by a disastrous flood. Damage to thousands of dollars' worth of property and the death of scores of men and cattle might also be a consequence."

"But surely the dam is well guarded?" asked Ralph.

"That's just the trouble," said Mr. Hungerford seriously. "At night, I understand, only one old man is on watch there, and if he should meet with an accident there would be no one to watch for the safety of the ranchers in the foothills."

"Yep, if she'd carry away, she sure would raise Cain!" agreed Bud Wilson.

"Engineers are figuring on some means of strengthening the retaining wall now, I understand," rejoined Mr. Hungerford. "I hope they will complete their work before any storm breaks."

Soon after, the subject was changed, and at the conclusion of their meal, after thanking their hospitable host, the little party set out for Agua Caliente.

"What does Agua Caliente mean, anyhow?" asked Ralph, as they rode out of Mr. Hungerford's place.

"Hot water," rejoined Bud; "and it looks to me as if we didn't have to go as far as the range to get in it."

"There are some hot springs on one part of the ranch," explained Jack.

As the sun grew low they were still in the saddle. The desert had now been passed and they were traversing foothills – rough, broken ground, covered with scrub oak and split and riven by dried water courses. Behind were the dark slopes of the Sierra de la Hacheta. They appeared black and menacing in the dying light.

"They look like regular robbers' roosts," said Ralph, regarding them as the horses picked their way over the rough road, which was scarcely better than a track.

"Robbers' roosts, I guess so," laughed Bud; "and there are some robber roosters among 'em, too," he went on. "Those mountains are on the border, and some place over beyond them is the most pestiferous band of cattle rustlers and horse thieves that ever bothered a nice, peaceable community. Why, before Sam Hickey shot Walter Dodge at – "

But the boys had broken into a roar of laughter at Bud Wilson's idea of a peaceable community.

Their merriment was brought to a sudden halt, however.

From the road ahead had come the sudden clatter of a horse's hoofs. The animal was evidently being urged ahead at full speed.

Bud's hand slipped swiftly back to his hip pocket. The boys realized by this almost automatic action that they were in a country where men are apt to shoot first and ask questions afterward.

Presently a little rise brought the galloper into view.

At the sight of the advancing party, he too slackened speed, and his hand made the same curiously suggestive movement as had Bud Wilson's.

"Howdy!" called Bud tentatively to the dark form outlined against the sombre background of brown, scrub-grown foothill and purple mountain.

"Howdy, Bud Wilson!" came back the hail. "I'll be switched if I didn't think it was Black Ramon and some of his gang, for a minute!"

"Why, hello, Walt Phelps!" hailed Bud cheerfully, as the other advanced. "I didn't know but you was some sort of varmint. How be yer?"

"First class, 'Frisco to Portland, Oregon. Hello, Jack Merrill! Well, you're looking natural. Welcome to our city!"

The stranger spurred his horse nearer, and Ralph saw that he was a boy about their own age, on a big, raw-boned gray horse that seemed capable of great efforts. Fast as the other had been advancing, the gray's flanks hardly heaved.

"Ralph, this is Walt Phelps. He and I used to play ball together when we weren't off on the range some place," said Jack, turning in his saddle to make the introduction. "He's a neighbor of ours. Lives on the next ranch. What are you hurrying so for, Walt?"

The other shoved back his broad sombrero, and the evening light shone on a freckled, good-natured face and the reddest hair Ralph had ever seen.

"Guess you ain't heard the news?" he asked curiously.

"No, what?"

"Why, those cattle rustlers have broken out again. Raided Perkin's last night and got away with fifty head."

"Phew!"

"And that's not all. They know who's at the head of the gang now."

"Who?"

"Why, that bullying greaser – what's his name? That Mexican who's been in trouble a dozen times – "

"Black Ramon De Barrios?"

"That's the rooster! We heard he had the nerve to show up in town, and I'm riding in to see if I can't pick up some fellows and head him off."

"I guess you're too late, Walt."

"How do you know? You only just got in to-day from the East. I met your father a while back, and he told me."

"I know, but we've had time to meet Black Ramon and put something on our side of the book against him."

"Say – tell me." The other's tone held amazement.

"Come on and ride back with us, and I'll tell you as we go along. Black Ramon's on Mexican soil by this time or soon will be."

Their adventures were soon related, and by the time Jack's narrative was concluded, the lights and welcoming voices of Agua Caliente were before them.