"I didn't hear that. All I found out was what I told you, and that, as I said, they are running guns across the border. That wagon's loaded up with machine-guns in heavy cases. They are labeled as agricultural machinery, and were taken off the train by white accomplices seventy miles or more from here. They chose this part of the border, I guess, as even Uncle Sam would never suspect any one of trying ter get guns over them hills yonder."
"Well, they can't take a wagon over those rocky, desolate places. How are they going to get them across, do you suppose?" asked the professor, his pain almost forgotten in the tense interest of the moment.
"That's just the funny part uv it," said Pete; "they never mentioned the mountains. You don't suppose there's any other way they could get 'em over the border, do you?"
"Maybe they have an airship," suggested Walt Phelps.
"Maybe," said Pete quite gravely, "I wouldn't put nothin' past a greaser."
"Hush!" exclaimed Ralph suddenly, "somebody's coming."
With beating hearts they sank into absolute silence. The three boys crouched at one end of the hollow altar, the professor and Coyote Pete bundled together into as small a space as possible at the other.
Voices, conversing in Spanish, could now be heard, and, from the inflection, the boys judged that whoever was talking was very much astonished over something.
"I recognize that voice," said Jack suddenly, in a low whisper, "it's Ramon de Barros."
The other two boys nodded. Ralph Stetson's heart beat so hard and fast that it fairly shook his frame. Truly the predicament of the party was a terrible one. Discovery by as wolf-hearted a band of ruffians—if they were all like their leader—as ever infested the border, was inevitable within the next few minutes. Taking into consideration their connection with Black Ramon in the past, it was unlikely in the extreme that any mercy would be shown them. Never had any of them looked so closely into the dark face of danger.