AN EXCITING QUEST.
In the meantime, the keenest anxiety prevailed in the camp. After
awaiting breakfast for a long time, it was at last eaten and the tin
dishes scoured, without there being any sign of the missing boy.
“We must organize a search at once,” declared the professor. “Following
on the top of that warning last night, it begins to look ominous.”
“Maybe he has lost himself, and will find his way back before long,”
suggested Ralph hopefully.
Coyote Pete gloomily shook his head.
“Jack Merrill ain’t that kind,” he said; “I tell yer, I don’t like the
looks of it.”
“Why not fire guns so that if he is in the vicinity he can hear them?”
was Walt Phelps’ suggestion.
“Yep, and bring the whole hornets’ nest down on our ears, provided they
are anywhar near,” grunted Coyote Pete. “No younker, we will have to
think up a better way than that.”
“Would not the search party I suggested be the best plan?” put in the
professor.
“Reckon it would,” agreed Coyote Pete; “what you kain’t find, look
fur,—as the flea said to ther monkey.”
But nobody laughed, as they usually did, at Pete’s quaintly phrased
observations. There was too much anxiety felt by them all over Jack’s
unexplained absence.
“Shall we take the horses?” inquired Walt.
“Sartin, sure,” was the cow-puncher’s rejoinder, “don’t want ter leave
’em here for that letter writer and his pals to gobble up.”
So the stock was saddled and the pack burros loaded and “diamond
hitched,” and the mournful and anxious little party got under way. It
so chanced that their way led them to the little hill where Jack had
stopped on the stolen horse and listened for sounds of the pursuit.
Coyote’s sharp eyes at once spied the tracks, but naturally he could
make nothing of them.
Suddenly Ralph Stetson, who had ridden a little in advance, gave a
startled cry.
“Come here, all!” he shouted.
“What’s up now?” grunted Coyote Pete, spurring forward, followed by the
others.
“Why, here’s a horse,—a dead horse, shot through the head, lying
here,” was the unexpected reply.
“Well, Mr. Coyote, what do you make of it?” asked the professor, after
Pete had carefully surveyed the ground in the vicinity.
“Dunno what ter make uv it yit,” snorted Pete. “Looks like ther’s
something back of this, as the cat said when she looked in the mirror,
and—wow!”
“What is it?” they chorused as they pressed about the spot where Coyote
was pointing downward, an unusual expression of excitement on his
ordinarily unemotional features.
“See that?” he demanded.
“Yes, I see several footsteps,” said the professor, “but what have
they——”
“Ter do with it? Everything. Them’s Jack Merrill’s footmarks or I lose
my guess. And see here, this little wavy line,—a lariat’s dragged
here. Oh, the varmints!”
“How do you construe all this?” asked the professor.
“Easy enuff. Them rascals, whoever they be, hev roped Jack, hog-tied
him and dragged him off.”
“O-oh!”
The exclamation, half a groan, burst from all their throats. Examining
the ground further, it seemed likely that Coyote’s construction of the
case was a correct one. All of which goes to show how very far wrong a
theory can go.
“Let’s hurry after them, whoever they are, and put up a fight,” cried
Ralph.
“Yes, we must rescue Jack,” echoed Walt Phelps.
“Now, hold your broncs, youngsters,” warned Coyote, “in the fust place
we dunno how many of them there be, and in the second we dunno jus’
whar they air. Am I right?”
“Indeed, yes,” said the professor. “Boys, you should not be so
impetuous. Julius Caesar, when he——”
“Dunno the gent,” struck in Pete, “but my advice is to kind of hunt
around this vicinity and maybe we’ll find some more clews. Go easy,
now, boys, and make as little noise as possible.”
A few moments later the ashes of the camp fire near which Jack had so
suddenly alighted were found, but of the outlaws no trace remained. As
a matter of fact, Ramon’s shouts had attracted them, and as soon as
they had rescued him the camp had been abandoned in a hurry. It did not
suit Ramon just then to try conclusions with the Border Boys.
“Wall, here’s whar they camped,” muttered Coyote Pete, “we certainly
had some close neighbors last night.”
The boys examined the camp site with interest, while the professor
and Coyote Pete conversed earnestly apart. At the conclusion of their
confab, Coyote Pete spoke.
“It’s up to us to go forward, boys,” he said. “Ain’t no use lingering
’bout these diggin’s.”
“But mayn’t the bad men have turned back down the canyon?” asked Ralph.
Coyote shook his head.
“Think agin, son,” he admonished, “the floor of the gulch is too narrow
for ’em to hev got by us without our knowing it.”
“That’s so,” said Walt, while Ralph colored up a bit. He didn’t like to
be looked upon as a tenderfoot.
It was some time later that they reached the volcanic-looking stretch
of country into the pitfalls of which Jack had fallen.
“Ugh! What a dreary place!” stammered Walt, a bit apprehensively.
Somehow they all felt the oppressive gloom in the same way. It
depressed and made them silent. When they spoke at all it was in
hushed tones, like folks use in church or a big museum. This is the
effect of most awe-inspiring scenery, be it beautiful and grand, or
merely gloomy and threatening.
“In past ages volcanic energy was at work here,” said the professor,
gazing about with interest; “the formation of yonder cliffs tells an
interesting story to the scientist. I wish my geological hammer was not
in the packs, and I could get some specimens of the rocks. They would
be excessively interesting.”
“Not half so interesting ter me as a peek at Jack Merrill,” grunted
Pete. “I wish your science was capable of finding that lad for us,
professor.”
“Indeed, I wish so, too,” sighed the professor, “but that is outside
the realm of science. She can tell you of the past but is silent as to
the future.”
“I wonder if there are any volcanoes ’round about here now?” asked
Ralph, looking about rather apprehensively.
“No, indeed, the fires are long extinct,” declared the professor, “this
valley was formed at a remote period when no doubt hot water geysers
and fires spouted through the earth’s crust. But that will never occur
again. In fact——”
“Look! Look there!” shouted Walt, suddenly pointing off to one side of
the valley.
“By Jee-hos-o-phat—smoke!” yelled Pete, fairly startled out of his
usual composure.
“A volcano!” cried Walt “Hadn’t we better be getting away from here?”
“This is most extraordinary,” exclaimed the man of science, “there is
every evidence here that the internal fires have been long extinct
and yet, as if to confound us, smoke comes pouring from that fissure
yonder.”
“Wall, my vote is that we git right out of hyar quick,” declared Pete,
“volcanoes and Peter de Peyster never did agree.”
But the professor, filled with scientific ardor, was already spurring
his bony animal across the scarred and arid plain toward the smoke.
The others, watching him, saw him approach the fissure carefully and
dismount. The next instant he uttered a yell that startled them all.
“Hez ther fireworks started?” asked Coyote anxiously.
The professor was waving his bony arms around like one of those wooden
figures that you see on barns. He was evidently in a state of great
excitement.
“What’s that he’s shouting?” asked Walt. “Hark!”
“Boys! boys! I’ve found him—Jack!”
This was the cry that galvanized them all into action. Without seeking
for explanations, in fact, without a word, they spurred toward the
professor’s side. They found him peering down into the fissure, the
edge of which was concealed by grass and ferns. Craning their necks,
they, too, could spy a figure in the depths of the crevasse.
“Jack! Jack, old boy! Are you all right?” they cried anxiously.
“Bright and fair!” came up the cheery answer, “but almost dead. I
thought you’d never come. Got anything to eat?”
“Anything your little heart desires,” Walt assured him.
In the meantime Pete had been busy getting a lariat in trim to lower
to the beleaguered boy. Presently it was ready, and after much hauling
and struggling, they got their companion once more to the surface. Jack
reeled for an instant as he gained the brink, but Ralph’s arms caught
him. The next minute he had recovered his self-possession, however, and
after eating ravenously of such provisions as could be got together
hastily, he related the story of the strange things that had happened
to him since leaving camp that morning.
“If I hadn’t thought of those matches in my pocket and of igniting
a fire of that dried grass, I doubt if I’d have been here now,” he
concluded.
“I think you are right,” said the professor gravely, “I am glad that
that fire at least was not extinct.”