CHAPTER XII.
THE GRINGOES MOVE.
From without the door there now came shouts of baffled rage. TheMexicans were finding out, as their kind has done before, that a partyof brave Americans is more than a match for twice their number in afight. Moreover, thanks mainly to Jack’s presence of mind in slippingout of the house and performing scout work, our party was stronglyentrenched. The door was stout, and the iron bar within solid. Therewas no apparent way of forcing an entrance by battering it down, forthe landing was too small to use a “ram” effectually.
“Hooray, we’ve got ’em beaten!” cried Ralph thoughtlessly.
Coyote flashed a scornful eye on him.
“Beaten!” he scoffed, “we ain’t got ’em beaten till we’re out of thisplace and miles on our way. Why, if they kain’t do anything else theykin starve us out if they want to.”
“That’s so,” assented Ralph sorrowfully, and then with a violent twistof spirits, “I guess we’re goners.”
“There, go galloping off the reservation agin,” struck in Pete; “weain’t goners yit by a long shot, but we’ve got a powerful lot of workafore us, as the government said when they tackled digging that PanamaCanal.”
All now became silent once more, or at least the boys could hearnothing. Evidently the Mexicans had withdrawn for a council of war.
“This time they’ll be in dead earnest,” opined the cow-puncher, “sokeep a smart eye open for ’em everywhere.”
Hanging breathlessly on the least sound, the besieged party waitedfor the first sign of the coming attack. It was a long time in makingitself manifest, and when it did, it was for a moment puzzling enough.It came in the form of a noise from above.
“Somebody’s on the roof!” exclaimed Pete. “The foxy varmints! I wonderthey didn’t think of that before.”
The roof of the lonely rancho was flat, and soon they could hearseveral footsteps on it as their besiegers paced about.
“What are they going to do?” asked Ralph in a puzzled tone.
“Not hard to guess,” rejoined the professor, “cut a hole in it, Iguess, and then they’ll have us completely at their mercy.”
“If we let them,” said Jack, “but why not try to escape by the trap,while they are busy on the roof?”
“That might be a good idea if it warn’t likely that they have the footof the ladder guarded, or most probably have taken it down,” saidCoyote Pete; “no, you’ll have to guess agin, Jack. Think uv somethingnew and original.”
“I might say try that door, but I guess that’s guarded, too.”
“Not a doubt of it,” was the reply.
“Tell you what we’ll do,” exclaimed Jack suddenly, struck with aninspiration, “we’ll try the walls. There may be a secret passage or aconcealed window in them some place.”
The cow-puncher laughed.
“This ain’t a story book, son, and I never heard of such things outsideof one. Lady Gwendolens in real life come out by the fire escape moreoften than by the old secret passage or the haunted wing.”
Undismayed, however, Jack set about his task. He was in the midst ofit, and had met with no success,—not that he had seriously hoped forany,—when a sudden sound pierced the darkened garret.
The noise was that of axes cutting into the roof.
As Jack listened a slight shudder ran through him. From that point ofvantage the outlaws could shoot them down as they wished, and therewould not be much chance of using their four remaining shots in return.By this time Jack had reached the spot by the big stone chimney fromwhich they had taken the stone used to weight the table above the trapdoor.
With a rather vague idea of using some more of the stones as weapons,he started pulling down the remaining loose ones. He had been at thiswork but a few minutes when he gave a sudden cry of triumph.
“Look! Boys! Look here!” he cried, amazedly.
They scurried to his side to find him pointing into a black, yawningmouth, evidently intended originally for a fireplace but leftunfinished, as the stones they had used now testified.
“It’s big enough to swallow a horse almost,” cried Ralph.
“It’s big enough to save our lives, maybe,” grunted Pete, “but maybeit’s only a blind lead, and may come out nowhere. In that case a fellowat the bottom of a well would be better off than the chap in there,for ther’d be no way of gitting out uv that chimney once you got in,and—Jumping Jupiter! Come back, boy!”
But it was too late. While Coyote Pete had been talking, Jack hadslipped into the fireplace, and clutching the rough sides of thechimney had taken the daring drop.
The others listened above in breathless anxiety, and then, to theirinfinite relief, a voice trickled up to them from the depths.
“It’s all right, boys! Come on, but take it easy, for I knocked all theskin off my shins in my hurry.”
The blows on the roof were by this time becoming louder, and they coulddistinctly hear the sound of splintering wood as the axe blades cutinto it.
“They’ll hev pecked through that in ten minutes, now,” said Pete,getting over to one side of the fireplace, “come on, boys. Be on yourway.”
But the boys insisted on the professor going first, now that they knewthe drop was safe enough. Not without misgivings, to which he was toobrave to give utterance. Professor Wintergreen, scientist and writer,cast himself into that black hole in the garret of the lonely rancho.An instant later, after a prodigious scraping and bumping, word cameup that he, too, was safe. Ralph and Walt came next, the former softlyhumming:—
“I don’t know where I’m goin’, but I’m on my way.”
Coyote Pete came last; and now we shall follow the party, leaving theMexicans still hacking away at the roof. It is a trip worth taking,too, for at the bottom of the chimney an astonishing condition ofthings prevailed.
The smoke duct led not into a cellar or into a blind hole, but instead,Jack, on alighting, had found himself, soot covered and scratchedand torn, in a large open fireplace in a small room. As he made hissensational entrance there was a sudden sharp scream from a corner ofthe room and a female figure clad in white sprang up.
For an instant a dreadful fear that he had alighted in some sort of atrap flashed into Jack’s mind. But the next instant he realized thatthe alarmed girl was none other than the senorita, and that the roominto which he had fallen was the one selected as her prison.
“Hush, senorita!” exclaimed the boy, as soon as he had given the signalto his comrades above that all was well, “do not fear me. I am notone of your enemies but a friend, an American. My companions are withme,—er—er—that is, they will be.”
“Oh, senor!” cried the girl in English, “what a dreadful fright yougave me. You—you, if you will excuse me, you are so black. I supposeit’s the soot in the chimney.”
Jack could hardly refrain from smiling, as, for the first time, hebethought himself of the alarming figure he must present.
“I’m not as black as I’m painted, senorita, really, I’m not. Nor arethese two new arrivals chimney sweeps, but young American gentlemen,”he added with a sweeping bow, as Walt Phelps and Ralph popped out ofthe chimney. “Allow me to present myself. I am Jack Merrill, and theseare my friends, Walt Phelps, of New Mexico, and Ralph Stetson, of NewYork. Not forgetting,” he added merrily, as the professor straightenedup from an instinctive brushing of his clothes, “our instructorand—er—er—chaperone, Professor Wintergreen, of Stonefell College,and,” as the other member of the party appeared, “Mister Peter dePeyster, of the Merrill Ranch.”
“At your service, miss,” said Coyote Pete with a low, sweeping bow anda deep flourish of his sombrero, to which even in his fall he had clung.
“Oh, I feel safer now,” cried the girl delightedly, “but,” and sheclasped her hands, “_Madre de Dios_, what I have passed through! I wassummoned to my garden this evening by a decoy message, that one of thegood sisters at the convent wished to see me. I had hardly set foot onthe path when I was seized and carried o
ff!”
“The rest of your story we know, senorita,” said Jack earnestly.
“You know it?” repeated the girl in an amazed tone, “but, senor, I donot understand.”
“I will explain later,” said Jack, “at least, we all hope to have thepleasure of doing so. I may add that I overheard the ruffians, yourcaptors, discussing the matter while I was hiding in a pig pen.”
The senorita’s large dark eyes grew larger than ever at this. Shebegan to think Jack a very peculiar young person to come sliding downchimneys into rooms and to choose to eavesdrop on brigands from pigpens. But she made no comment, and the talk at once turned to thesubject of escape.
The door of the room was of oak, barred and bolted on the outside,and impregnable. But the window, high up in the wall though it was,appeared to be just about large enough to squeeze through, ampleenough even for Coyote Pete, who was the largest of the party.
“Reckon we can reach it by putting this chair on that table yonder,”declared Pete, “but we’ll have ter look slippy, for those chaps will bethrough the roof before long, and when they discover we’re gone and seethe hole in the chimney, they’ll guess the route we’ve taken.”
When the table had been dragged over under the window and the chairplaced upon it, Pete clambered up and found that he could easily reachthe aperture.
“It’s all clear outside, too, and the corral isn’t more than a few rodsaway,” he announced. “Boys, if we have any sort of luck we may get outof this and save the young lady. I’ll go first, for it’s a longish dropto the ground. Those that foller kin land on my shoulders.”
The next instant he raised his lithe, ranch-toughened form and wriggledthrough the hole. In a flash he was gone.
“Your turn next, senorita,” said Jack; “allow me to assist you.”
The brave girl made no foolish hesitation about obeying. With agraceful little leap she was on the table and by Jack’s side. In ajiffy he had assisted her through and she was caught by Coyote Peteoutside. Next came the professor; following him, Walt and Ralph. AsWalt alighted, he was ordered to creep over to the corral, keepingcautiously in the shadow of the willows. Once in the corral he wasto get all their horses and a saddle for the senorita, if possible,selecting any one from the two or three hanging on the fence after theshiftless Mexican fashion. Presently Jack joined him at the risky work,having been the last to emerge from the window.
They had got the last of their own horses and had selected one for thesenorita, when there came a loud shout from behind them followed by avolley of shots.
A dreadful fear shot into Jack’s heart. Had they been discovered?