A careful examination of the place, made as well as they could in the moon-checkered darkness, showed that Pete's diagnosis of their prison as "a bottle" was a correct one. The walls were solid, and appeared, just judging by the depth of the window embrasures, to be several feet thick. The windows themselves were far too high up to reach, even had they not been barred. The floor, after a careful tapping, yielded no sign of being hollow in any place.
"I was hoping we might find a hollow place somewhere," said Pete, in explaining this last maneuver. "You know these old padres lived a scary kind of life, and every once in a while their Indian converts would up and backslide and attack the church mission. So as they could do a quick getaway when such contingencies came loping along, they used to make tunnels, but I guess if these fellers that built this place tunneled they did it some other part."
"What you say is correct," chimed in the professor, more as if he was in the lecture room than a prisoner across the border, in the hands of ferocious cattle-rustlers; "the padre sometimes dug these tunnels so that they covered considerable distances. Burrows of this character, a mile or even more in length have been found in California."
"Wa'al, I wish we had the tools handy and we'd bore one ourselves," said Pete; "but as we ain't, the best thing we can do is to make ourselves as comfortable as possible and go to sleep. Things won't get no better for fretting over them, and we're in a fix now where things is bound to get a lot worse before they get better."
The cow-puncher, suiting the action to the word, lay down, and in a few moments his snores proclaimed that he slept. One after the other, the rest dozed off, till only Ralph remained awake. Jack Merrill had done his best to cheer the Eastern lad up before he sought refuge in slumber, but Ralph's position weighed on his mind too keenly to permit him to sleep. While the others lay stretched out in slumber he arose and began pacing the old church. He was not a superstitious lad, but the silence of the empty vaulted place, their position, and the uncertainty of their fate, all combined to fill him with a nervous dread.
Suddenly he stopped short in his pacing to and fro. Every nerve in his body tingled and his scalp tightened with alarm at a sudden sound he had heard.
Proceeding, it seemed, from the very masonry of the edifice itself, there had come a sound, which heard as it was, in those gloomy surroundings, was as terrifying as could be imagined.
"Who is there?" shouted the boy in frightened tones.
But the sound which he had heard ceased instantly. Nor, though he listened almost till dawn crept into the sky, and sleep overcame him, was it repeated.