“It has been some time since we ate.” Ace tightened his belt. “Must be getting late in the day! Let’s run!” And run they did, till they began slipping on a muddy slope.
They had to place each foot with care now, and their progress was slow. At the same time their candles were nearly gone. “Now let’s put out all but one,” suggested Ted. “Just burn one at a time. What would we do without any light?” But Ace did not know the answer.
What of Pedro, meantime? At that particular instant he had just tried to make his get-away, with the result that three drawn daggers were being flourished threateningly and most unhealthily near his heart. He had overheard enough evidence to convict all three of the Mexicans, thanks to his knowledge of the parent language, but as the desperadoes pushed farther and farther into the labyrinth, he gathered that they would come out a good safe distance from where they had entered,—probably on the other side of the ridge. Had he known the Ranger’s whereabouts at that precise moment, he would have felt very differently.
Radcliffe, meantime, was staring into the dark recess of the cavern, but all he could see was the two shining eyes of whatever occupant was there. Was it bear or cougar? For both, he knew, took refuge in caves. The largeness of the eyes inclined him to the belief that it was a California mountain lion, and such it was part of his work to exterminate,—though the state also hires an official lion hunter.
That the great cats are cowards he well knew. But this one was cornered, and might prove no mean antagonist. With revolver cocked in his right hand, his lamp in the other, he advanced toward those two shining fires. A faint scratching along the rocky floor warned him that the animal was gathering for a spring. He was still rather far for a revolver shot, but he aimed straight between the eyes. His shot reverberated with a thousand echoes. The sounds, ear-splitting in the smoke-filled gloom,—thundered like a thousand siege guns, it seemed to Radcliffe, stalactites tumbled about his ears like crockery, and more appalling than all the rest was the weird, almost human scream of the wounded animal, which likewise reëchoed for several minutes. The unwitting cause of all this turmoil was in a cold perspiration when things finally quieted down. But the puma, (for such it proved to be), lay dead at his feet.
The three Mexicans likewise heard the racket, for they, as it happened, were not far away. The Ranger had very nearly trailed them. With rolling eyes and hands that mechanically traced the sign of the cross, they listened, while the thunders died away.
Pedro, though his nerves were more than a little shaken, was quick to seize his opportunity. Slipping like an eel through a narrow opening between two columns, where the dripstone had all but closed the way into another chamber, he would have escaped observation entirely had it not been for his betraying torch-light.
Sanchez darted after him. But remember, Sanchez was at least a hundred pounds heavier than even well-fed Pedro. The result might have been expected. He stuck mid-way! And there he dangled his fat legs in an endeavor to free himself, while Pedro doubled with laughter and the other Mexicans stared, too amazed to move.
“Pull, can’t you, pull!” was Pedro’s expurgated version of Sanchez’s reiterated discourse with his followers. And when no one came to his rescue, he nearly burst a blood vessel in his helpless wrath.
Pedro, feeling safe from pursuit, with such a plug in the only approach to his sanctuary, now for the first time disclosed his knowledge of Mexican. Sanchez’s astonishment was as huge as his attitude was undignified, and if words could have seared, Pedro would have been well scorched. But the boy only told him of an item he had read in the paper, where a fat man got stuck in a cave and had to fast for three days before his girth had diminished sufficiently that he could be extricated.