The men were all there,—as was Ranger Radcliffe, whom the DeHaviland had evidently returned with fresh supplies. It took but few words to acquaint them with the situation.
By the time Ted had drank a quart of coffee with his breakfast, he was able to pull himself together again and lead the possé to the hidden cave mouth. The Ranger would have to be the one to go, to make the arrest, and he deputized Ace to help him. That meant leaving Norris to head the firemen. (It never occurred to any of them that they would not be right back with Pedro and the Mexicans. The foam-flecked horse Ted left to Rosa’s care.)
The cave mouth accomplished, Radcliffe entered first, with revolver cocked, though Ace almost trod on his heels. Ted staggered after with a flaming pine knot flickering in his almost nerveless hand.
The cavern was absolutely empty!
To Pedro, left in the cave mouth to watch the Mexicans, the night had been the crucial test.
He had been asleep when Ted departed, while the Mexicans had slept within the cave. He awoke to find the three dark visages bending over him, their verbal fireworks hissing about his ears. At first “caballo” was all he could make of it,—(the horse). Then as Sanchez the stout, soared rhetorically above the others, he gathered that they dared not leave him and they could not carry him. “El Diablo!” How much simpler to thrust a dagger between his ribs. “Muerte!—Presto!” But no, wait! For the time being he would walk between them carrying two extra torches. There must be another exit to the cave, but could the burros make it with the packs? Try it they must, for this way their choice lay between the fire fighters and the flames. The doomed forest still glowed red and black down canyon, and with the morning light, the wind veered till the smoke assailed them chokingly. There was no time to be lost.
Never for an instant dreaming that Pedro understood, they gave him the torches he was to bear, and started into the depths of the cavern. And the boy? Too frightened at first to have spoken had he tried to, he had the wit to see that protest would be useless. They were three to one, armed, and desperate, and they counted him a likely witness to their incendiarism.
Besides, now that the wind had changed, he could not have gone ten paces without having been blinded by the smoke till he could not see where he was heading. This side of the canyon was going to go like tinder, too. Besides,—this came later,—how could he allow the fire bugs to get away? His job was to keep tabs on them, and that he would now have an exceptional opportunity to do, he cheered himself.
At first the flare of the torches revealed merely the cavern of onyx stalactites he had seen the night before. This formation wound in a narrowing labyrinth until they made a sharp turn to the left. Presently they came to a pit of inky water, around which they had to skirt on a sloping shelf. The burros could not make it and they left them there. Either, Pedro argued, they meant to return that way or else they had other supplies awaiting them. But now they could no longer smell the smoke. From somewhere came pure air, damp and refreshingly chilly. The sounds of the outer world were cut off completely. On and on they wandered as in a dream. Pedro began surreptitiously pinching himself to make sure he was not having some weird nightmare.
They came to a grotto that might have been brown marble, whose curious carvings he had no time to study. From this they had to crawl on hands and knees through an opening into another twisting passageway, floored with muddy water and barely high enough for them to stand erect. Their voices echoed and reechoed. Then came arches of stalactites almost meeting the stalagmites beneath them, through which they edged their way as through a frozen forest.