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CHAPTER XIII.
THE HERMIT OF THE CANYON

After some difficulty they found a place in the side of the watercourse up which the ponies could scramble. The little animals were soon once more among the rough, broken ground and stiff scrub brush of the upper foothills. The way was steeper now, and even the inexperienced Jack knew that they must be approaching the mountains themselves. Presently in fact, the darker outlines of the range could be seen dimly against the night, looking at first more like a darker portion of the sky itself than a solid body reared against it.

"Rough going," muttered Pete, "but these little skates are jack rabbits at the work."

"There goes Ramon and his outfit," exclaimed Jack a minute later, when after one of their listening pauses they heard a clattering of hoofs and confused shouts and baying far below them.

"Yep, and I guess he's a worried greaser right now," grinned Pete. "You see he'll be figuring that if we get clear away it won't be long before he has the soldiers after him and his precious bunch."

"The soldiers?" asked Jack, "United States cavalry men? Why it will take a week to get them."

"No, sonny, not United States chaps, more's the pity. A few of our blue breeches would clean out that confabulation in double-quick time. No, the military I refer to are the Mexican troops. If it's a Saint's day or anything, when they get the order to move they won't budge."

"What, they'll refuse duty?"

"Yep. They'll sit around and smoke cigarettes and play dice till they get good and ready to move, that's the kind of soldier men they have over the border."

"Well, why can't some of our fellows get after Ramon?"

"If they could, sonny, the whole question of trouble on the border would be over and done with. But you see there's some sort of law – international law, they call it – that works all right in Washington, and so the big bugs there figure out it must be all right here. We couldn't send troops into Mexico after those greaser cattle-rustlers any more than they could send after the rascals that get from Tamale land into the States."

"Then it works both ways?"

"That's just the trouble, it don't. All the Mexican rascals get cotched when they cross into the States, but all kinds of rascals, white, black, yellow and red, escape all their troubles by skipping inter Mister Diaz's country."

"That doesn't seem fair."

"Nor does lots of things in this old world, son, but we've got to grin and bear it, I reckon, just as Ramon ull have to do if he don't pick up our trail."

Such progress did the fugitives make that night that by the time their guiding star began to fade in the sky they found themselves in a wild cañon, rock walled, and clothed, in places where vegetation could find root-hold, with the same fir, madrone and piñon as Grizzly Pass. The rising sun found them still pressing onward. They did not dare to stop, for although they were pretty sure none of the Mexicans would have followed thus far, they were aware that it would be folly to halt till they had put all the miles possible between them and their enemies.

"There's one thing we know now, anyhow," said Pete with some complacency, as they rode on over the rocky ground among the pungent-smelling mountain bay bushes, "and that is that the cañons in these hills split north and south, so that we won't stray that way."

"I read somewhere, too, that you can tell the north because there's more moss on the trunks of the trees on the north side than any other," announced Jack with some pride.

To his chagrin, Pete burst into a laugh.

"That might be all right in Maine, son, for city hunters, but what are you going to do out here where all the water these hills and trees get is needed for something else than moss-making?"

It was about noon, and in that deep gulch the sun was beating down oppressively, when Jack gave a sudden cry.

"Look, Pete, look – a trail!" he cried.

Sure enough, winding among the brush there was a small trail just wide enough for a horse to travel in. The brush scraped their legs as they rode along it.

"Might as well follow it, I guess," said Pete, after a careful scrutiny. "Only one man been along here, so far as I can see. We're still on the Mex. side, though, so have your shooting iron ready in case we run into trouble."

With every sense alert, they rode on for a mile or more, when suddenly the trail gave an abrupt turn, and they saw before them a small hut fashioned roughly out of logs, stones and brush. From its chimney blue smoke was pouring, scenting the woods about with a pleasant incense.

"Cooking," cried Pete, "and that reminds me that my appetite and my stomach have been fighting like a cat and a dog for the last two hours."

"I could eat something myself," said Jack. "We haven't had a bite since yesterday noon, you know."

"That's so," assented Pete. "We've been so busy, though, I never noticed it till just now."

"That's queer," said Jack, noting the same curious fact; "neither did I. But I do feel ravenous enough to eat a rhinoceros now."

"Wonder where the boss of this sheebang is?" queried Pete, as on a closer approach no sign of life was apparent about the place.

"Well, he can't be out calling on neighbors," laughed Jack.

"I guess there's no harm in just looking in and taking a peep."

"Better be careful," said Jack. "I've heard that these mountain hermits are a queer lot, and this one might shoot us."

"Hi-yi!" yelled Pete suddenly, "look at that!"

Jack looked, and saw that projecting through a cranny in the stone wall was the rusty muzzle of a rifle, seemingly of big caliber.

There was something uncanny in the sight of this sinister weapon, aimed dead at them, with apparently no human hand to guide it.

"Better get out of range, son," warned Pete, reining over his pony; "that feller might be nervous on the trigger."

But as they swung to one side of the trail the ominous rifle barrel followed, still keeping them covered.

"Confound the fellow!" burst out Jack, hardly knowing whether to be amused or angry, "what does he mean?"

"Business, apparently," grunted Pete dryly.

"Hi, amigo!" the cow-puncher suddenly shouted.

A rude query in Spanish came back from inside the hut.

"Wants to know who we are," he said in an aside to Jack. Then to the hermit:

"We are hunters, and lost in the mountains. Can we get food and water and some fodder for the ponies?"

An almost unintelligible answer came back.

"Wants us to lay down our rifles," translated Pete. "What do you say?"

"I guess we'll have to," said Jack. "I'm so hungry that I feel as if I'd risk anything for a square meal."

"That's the way I feel," agreed Pete. "The ponies, too, are pretty well played out. Reckon we'd better do as he says."

Accordingly, the rifles were dropped on the ground at the ponies' sides, and presently the rusty rifle barrel was withdrawn.

"What now?" wondered Jack.

The solitary cañon-dweller presently appeared at the door of his hut. He was an old man in ragged garments, so tattered as to here and there expose his flesh. His face was wrinkled till it resembled a monkey's more than a human being's. The lower half of his countenance was completely covered by a huge matted growth of white beard. He still kept his aged rifle in his hand as he faced his visitors, as if he was afraid of some treachery.

"Better tell him that we don't mean him any harm," suggested Jack.

Pete translated the boy's remark to the hermit, who chattered rapidly in Mexican in response. While he was talking Jack eyed the queer old man.

"I believe he is crazy," he said to himself. The hermit's beady eyes had a malevolent glare in them, and when they fell on him Jack felt a creepy sort of sensation.

"I don't half like the idea of going into that old fellow's hut," he told himself, "but I guess there's no help for it."

Pete, however, it seemed, felt no such apprehensions, for he was now leading the two ponies round to a small shelter in the face of the mountain which served the old man as a stable. A disreputable-looking "clay-bank" mule, with only one ear and a half, was standing in it disconsolately flopping her whole organ of hearing.

"He don't look very good, but I guess he's all right," said Pete in a low tone, in response to Jack's whispered comment on the old hermit.

Inside the hut they found a smoky sort of stew cooking in a big iron pot. The old Mexican explained that the meat in it was deer flesh, and the vegetables, which were corn, tomatoes, and peppers, came from a small patch he cultivated behind his lonely hut. Although they had to eat with one spoon out of the great pot itself, neither of the travelers was in a critical or fastidious mood, and they made a hearty meal.

The food disposed of, Pete, to his huge delight, discovered that the old man had some home-grown tobacco, and having borrowed a black pipe from him, he fell to smoking. All this time Jack was nervous and apprehensive. Once or twice he had caught the ragged old fellow's beady eyes fixed on him, with their strange burning look. His impression that the lonely hut-dweller was insane grew upon him. But Pete seemed quite at his ease. Suddenly the cow-puncher said:

"I'm as sleepy as the Old Scratch, Jack. What do you say if we take forty winks?"

"Better be getting on, Pete; we can sleep later," warned Jack with a wink in the direction of the old man, to show he mistrusted him.

"Ho-ho-ho-hum!" yawned the cow-puncher. "We didn't get enough sleep for a cat last night. Anyhow, the ponies have got to rest up a bit."

As he spoke he threw himself at full length on a rough couch, covered with skins, at one end of the hut, and which apparently served the old hermit for a bed.

Before Jack could remonstrate, Pete, with the quick adaptability of the plainsman, was off in a deep slumber, snoring till the roof of the place shook.

"Well, there's no use waking him if he's as sleepy as all that," thought Jack, who, to tell the truth, was feeling very drowsy himself.

After making a scanty meal, the old man with the shifty eyes shouldered a hoe, and mumbling something, made off. Jack watched him and saw that he took his way up the hillside to his garden where he set to work among the cornstalks.

The occupation seemed so harmless that Jack felt half ashamed of his suspicions. Nevertheless, he was determined to keep a keen lookout. Seating himself in a big chair, roughly fashioned out of logs, with a big bearskin spread over it, the boy prepared to keep his vigil. But alas! for the best determination of man and boy. It grew very still in the hut. Far up on the hillside came the monotonous tap-tap of the old man's hoe. Insects buzzed drowsily in the warm afternoon air. The whole world seemed in a conspiracy to put the tired boy to sleep.

Once Jack caught himself nodding, he awoke with an angry start at his own neglectfulness. A second time the same thing occurred, but this time his start was not quite so abrupt. Presently his deep regular breathing was added to the sonorous snores of Coyote Pete.

Not long afterward, the worker in the corn-patch dropped his hoe and started down the hill-side toward the hut. A malevolent smile flitted across his apelike features as he heard Pete's snores. Approaching the hut from the back, the hermit cautiously raised himself, till his wild face was peering into a small, unglazed window. His grin grew wider as he noted Jack's slumber-stilled form. Then he dropped from the window and walked rapidly away.

How much later it was that Jack awakened, he did not know. All that he was aware of was that the hut seemed singularly dark, and that the fire on the hermit's hearth was out. The cause of the darkness soon became apparent. The door of the place was shut.

Jack hastened across the floor to open it. To his consternation, it resisted his stoutest efforts. It had been barred on the outside. The window through which the hermit had peered was little more than a hole, and too small to permit egress of either his own or Pete's body.

Hastily the boy awoke Pete, who at once began blaming himself bitterly for being the cause of the catastrophe. There was small doubt in the minds of either that the old hermit had locked them in; though for what purpose they could not, at the moment, imagine.

"We'll have to break the door down," said Pete as he hastily rose, brushing the sleep out of his eyes.

He gave the door a terrific shake, but it did not tremble. It was stronger than they had supposed. Pete, mustering every ounce of strength in his muscular body, crouched himself half across the room, and then with a terrific rush tried to break it down with his shoulder.

Still it did not budge.

For the second time in twenty-four hours the fugitives were prisoners.

CHAPTER XIV.
TRAVELS WITH A MULE

"Well, was I right?"

"Oh, say, don't rub it in, Jack. Of course you were. I was a fool to have gone to sleep, but – "

"Never mind reproaching yourself now, Pete," said Jack soberly. "The thing to do is to get out of here as quick as possible."

"Yes, we've no time to lose," said Pete, a serious look coming over his ordinarily cheerful countenance.

Jack caught a more serious meaning underlying the words than they seemed to hold in themselves.

"I should say so," he rejoined. "We've got to catch that old ruffian and give him the thrashing of his life. The idea of shutting us in here. I thought he was crazy, and now I know it."

"Not so crazy as you think, Jack," replied Pete gravely. "I'm afraid he's got more sense than we gave him credit for, and that right now we are in more serious danger than at any time since we escaped."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind now. I don't want to scare you to death without there being any necessity for it. What I want to impress on you is that there is no time to lose."

"Of course, I appreciate that," rejoined Jack, not quite making out what Pete meant, but thinking it wiser to abstain from asking questions at the moment, "but how are we to get out?"

"Dunno right now," said Pete, scratching his head abstractedly.

"I have it," cried Jack suddenly. "We'll burn the door down."

"What about matches?"

"There are still some embers on the hearth there, and a pile of brush beside it. I'm sure we can do it."

"Well, let's get to work, then," said Pete, who seemed strangely ill at ease.

A goodly pile of brush was soon piled against the rough door and ignited by means of taking an ember from the fire and blowing on it till it burst into flame. Up roared the flames, the timber fire crackling against the stone roof and filling the hut with a choking smoke. Luckily, most of this escaped by the window, or they might have run a good chance of being suffocated.

"Say, it'll take a year to burn through the door at this rate," choked out Jack, after fifteen minutes or so of this.

"It would if we were going to burn through it, but we ain't," chuckled Pete. "Let the fire burn down now – or, better still, there's some water in that jar; just throw it over the blaze."

This being done, the fire soon died out, and then Pete, wresting one of the heavy loose stones from the hearth, battered with all his might against the charred wood. It took a long time, but at last a chink of daylight appeared.

"Hooray!" shouted Jack, as they attacked it with a piece of iron found near the cooking-hearth. Soon quite a hole appeared, and Pete, reaching through, encountered a heavy wooden bar leaned against the door from the outside, placed to hold it firmly closed. It was the work of but a few seconds to dislodge this and emerge into the open air.

Their work, however, had taken so much time that it was dusk when they stepped out of the door. Without a word, Pete, as if he had gone suddenly mad, darted off toward the old hermit's stable. He emerged in a second with an angry cry on his lips.

"Just as I thought," he exclaimed, "they're gone!"

"Gone!"

"Yes, the ponies and our rifles."

"Great Scott, what will we do?"

"Get away from here as soon as possible. If I don't miss my guess, that leathery-skinned old squeedink has recognized those ponies and started back to Black Ramon with them."

"Good gracious, that means – "

"That we'll have the whole boiling of them round us if we don't skeedaddle out of here pretty jerky. We lost a lot of valuable time getting that door down."

"But we've no ponies; how are we to travel on foot and keep ahead of them?"

"Well, there's that old one-and-a-half-eared mule out there. I reckon we won't be busting no code of ethics by borrering her. I'll get a saddle on her, and you just fill your pockets with whatever you can find in the way of grub, then we'll start."

In a few minutes all was ready, and the old mule, with a ragged saddle on her angular back, stood waiting with a drooping head. Pete swung himself into the saddle, and Jack, being lighter, leaped up behind, holding on to the cantle.

"All right, conductor. Ring the bell and we'll start this here trolley," grinned Pete, digging his feet into the old mule's ribs. She started off at a gait surprising in such a disreputable-looking animal.

"Well, we've got a start they never calculated on us getting," grunted Pete as they loped along. "If only our luck holds to the end, we'll beat them out yet."

The old mule plunged upward along the cañon, clambering over the rough ground with remarkable agility. One of the first things that Pete had taken care to do was to leave the trail in a rocky spot, where no telltale hoofmarks would show, and his course was now along the bottom of the gorge, where a small watercourse trickled.

"Well, we won't want for water, anyhow," he observed, with some satisfaction.

It grew dark rapidly, and nightfall found them in a wild part of the gorge with the main crests of the range reared forbiddingly above them. So far there had been no sign of pursuit, and both fugitives were beginning to hope that they had got clear away, when from far down the cañon they heard cries and shouts, and, looking back, saw a bright glare of light.

"Well, there they are," grinned Pete, "in a fine way of taking, I guess, over the fire."

"The fire," echoed the boy, puzzled; "is that what the glare is?"

"Yep," snorted Pete, "I reckoned we'd have to pay that old scallawag out some way, so I just scattered a few hot embers about his hut before we vamoosed. I reckon by the looks of things they're catching up. Guess he's sorry he left us now."

"Pete, you're incorrigible," exclaimed Jack, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry at the cow-puncher's wanton act. True, it was wrong to burn down the old hermit's hut, but still the lone dweller of the cañon had betrayed their trust by an act of base treachery.

"I guess the books are about balanced," said Jack to himself.

Aloud he asked:

"Do you think they'll come on after us to-night, Pete?"

"Reckon not," rejoined the cow-puncher; "if they do, 'twon't do them no good. We've killed out the trail in this watercourse, and even if they have the dogs they couldn't pick us up. Wisht we had a couple of good rifles. We could lay up there on the hillside as snug as you please and pick 'em out as we chose."

It soon became manifest that they could not travel much farther that night. Not only was the old mule giving signs of fatigue, but it was so dark that, as Pete said, they "ran a chance of breaking their necks any minute." They were now high on the eastern slope of the cañon, and a tumble down its steep sides might have had disastrous results. They therefore decided to camp where they were.

Making camp was a simple matter with their scant paraphernalia. The old saddle had a coil of rope attached to its horn, and this cord was made fast to the old mule's neck. Neither of the campers was thirsty, so after eating some of the provisions Jack had hastily stuffed in his pocket, and which consisted mostly of a pasty, sticky corn paste, Pete made their bed.

Rolled in the ragged saddle blanket, with the saddle for pillow, and the stars above them, the wanderers slept as peacefully as if in their beds at home, although their couch was a rocky one. Before turning in, Pete took the precaution of wrapping the old mule's rope around his wrist, so that in the event of a surprise during the night she would give the alarm by tugging on it.

"Isn't she liable to start off home without ceremony?" asked Jack as he observed this.

"Not she," rejoined Pete wisely; "she's too tired to move a step."

All of which goes to show, as we shall see later, that it takes a wise cow-puncher to know a mule.

It was about midnight that Jack was awakened by a most unearthly yell. He sprang to his feet, with every nerve in his body tingling, and the first thing he observed was that Pete was missing. The cause of absence was not long in doubt. A sudden fit of homesickness had seized the old one-eared mule in the night, and she had started without delay for the hermit's hut, dragging with her the luckless Pete. The cow-puncher's yells filled the cañon.

Small wonder was it that he cried out in anguish, for the side of the hill down which the old mule was loping was as steep as the side of a house, and plentifully bestrewn with rocks, inter-grown with rough scraggly brush. Jack was fully dressed, just as he had lain down, and he leaped off into the darkness in the direction in which Pete's hideous yells and the clattering of the old mule's hoofs proclaimed them to be. But before he reached them, the abrupt descent of the mountain by Pete had ceased. The old mule had been halted in midcareer by the rope becoming entangled in a small, low-growing piñon, and she had been checked as effectively as if a hand had been laid on the rope.

"Here, for goodness sake, get me cut loose from this she fiend incarnate," begged Pete, as he heard Jack coming toward him.

"Well, do make less noise, then," said Jack, who could hardly keep from laughing at Pete's doleful tones.

"Noise," groaned Pete, "it's a wonder I'm not making the all-sorrowfulest caterwauling you ever heard. If there's a sound bit of skin on my poor carcass, I'll give you a five-dollar gold piece for it, and no restrictions as to size, either. Ouch!"

He gave a painful exclamation as he rose to his feet.

"Consarn that mule," he grumbled, "I'm going to get me a good thick club, and her and me will argue this thing out. Look at that, will you, for pure cussedness."

No wonder the bruised and battered Pete was indignant. The runaway mule stood only a few paces from them, unconcernedly cropping some sort of prickly bush, which no animal but a mule would have had the courage to tackle.

"Mule's ain't human, as I've often observed," grunted Pete, in intense disgust; "they're a mixture of combustibles, hide and devilment, with a dash of red fire thrown in."

"Well, why did you tie the rope round your wrist, then?" asked Jack, untangling the tether, and starting to lead the mule back.

"Don't ask me any questions," roared Pete, rubbing himself affectionately, "or if you do, ask me why I was ever a consarned, peskyfied, locoed idjut enough to cross that bridge."

A sudden disturbance in the brush below them caused them to start and listen intently.

The noise sounded like several animals of some sort making a kind of stampede through the brush.

"The Mexicans!" was the first thought that flashed through Jack's mind. But the next instant he knew it was impossible that it could be they.

"Those are no Mexicans, boy," whispered Pete.

"What was it, then?"

"Hold on, thar, or I'll shoot," unwisely yelled Pete. Unwisely, because they, neither of them, had a weapon.

In reply a bullet sang past his ear, fired, judging by the momentary flash, from the direction of the trampling animals.

"Waal, what do you know about that?" grunted Pete amazedly. "This valley must be full of enemies of our'n."

"Better not do any more shouting," warned Jack.

"No, I reckon not. Wow! I heard the bees sing that time, all right."

"What do you suppose it could have been? Not Mexicans, certainly."

"Nope. At least I don't think so. Maybe Injuns."

"Indians!"

"Yes, every once in a while they stampede off the reservation and roam around promiscuous. But anyhow, whatever it was, or whoever it is, he's more scairt of us than we are of him. Hark!"

There was a mighty clattering of dislodged stones and rustling of brush coming out of the darkness, and diminishing in loudness every minute.

"Git thar, Fox! You ornery son of a side-winding rattler!" they heard an angry voice grunt under its breath, from the direction of the retreat.

"A white man, by Jee-hos-o-phat!" exclaimed Pete, his face lighting up. "Now what in thunder is he doing up here?"