"This rope. While you were getting ready up there"—even in the dark Jack felt his cheeks flush—"while you were getting ready up there, I fastened that greaser's rope to this old water-spout. All you got to do is to slide down."
A second later Jack flashed down the side of the old church to the ground, where, almost as soon as he had landed, Coyote Pete joined him.
"What now?" asked Jack amazedly. He had never dreamed when they stood on that dizzy tower that in less than ten minutes they would be on firm ground. Nor did he forget how much of the so-far successful escape was due to Coyote Pete's skill and resourcefulness. But the hardest and most dangerous part was yet to come.
Already the whole of the old church was aglow with lights, flashing hither and thither, and outside, shout answered shout from a dozen points of the compass.
"We'll run in the direction where there is the least racket," wisely decided Pete.
"Crouch as low as you can, Jack," he ordered, as, doubled almost in half, he darted off into the darkness.
Imitating his guide as best he could, Jack followed, but as ill-luck would have it, their way led past an old well. In the pitch blackness the boy did not avoid what Pete seemed to have steered clear of by instinct. With a crash that woke the echoes, he blundered headlong into a big pile of tin buckets and pails which had been placed there that day. A bull running amuck in a tin shop could hardly have made more noise.
"My great aunt alkali, you've done it now!" growled Pete, as the terrific crash sounded close behind him.
"Oh, go on, Pete! Go on, and leave me," cried Jack miserably. "I'll only hamper you. Go on by yourself."
"I'll go with you or not at all," was Pete's firm rejoinder. "Come on, now, hurry. They're bound to have heard that, and they'll be 'round here like so many hornets in a minute."