Occasionally, boiling springs sending up jets of sulphurous-smelling steam and bordered by brilliant green plants, were encountered. It was the most impressive country the boys had ever traveled through, and had a few fiends, all dressed in red, with hoofs, horns and tails complete, suddenly appeared from behind a mass of rocks, they would hardly have been surprised. The place seemed a fitting setting for an Inferno.
By dusk they were on a sort of plateau at the mouth of one of these mountain canyons. Trees and rocks of normal shapes and hues stood about in almost park-like fashion. Wild oats and plenty of bunch grass offered good and abundant feed for the horses, and from a cliff side of this little oasis in that land of gloomy horrors bubbled a crystal spring of cold water.
No wonder Ramon, with his countrymen’s instinct for selecting good camp sites, elected to halt there. As for the boys, even in their predicament, they could not help admiring the soft intimate character of the scenery, coming, as it did, after their experiences in the gloomy abysses and profundities behind them.
The prisoners were taken from their horses and then carefully rebound, although so stiff were their limbs from their long confinement that it is doubtful if they could have run just then, even had they found an opportunity. Supper was the same rough meal as the midday refection had been. To add to the unpalatable nature of the food, the boys had the doubtful pleasure of watching Ramon and his followers dine sumptuously on the contents of the Border Boys’ packs.
As night fell sentries were posted about the camp, and the prisoners could not but admire the caution which led Ramon, although in a presumably uninhabited part of the country, to post his outguards as carefully as if an immediate attack was to be expected. One by one the outlaws threw themselves on their blankets and were soon wrapped in that heavy slumber characteristic of the hardy dwellers of the open places. Only Ramon did not sleep. For hours he strode up and down in front of the fire with his head sunk on his breast. He seemed lost in thought. Once or twice he paused and seemed to listen intently. Was it possible that with his half-wild instinct he sensed the peril that was even then drawing in upon him through the night?
At last, however, even he sank off into slumber, and then, with the exception of an armed outlaw posted to guard the captives, the camp was enveloped in dense silence. The guard hummed softly to himself some old Spanish riding songs as he sat by the blaze, the firelight playing on his almost black features.
There was some tall grass at the back of the spot in which the boys and their elders had spread themselves out to snatch uneasy slumbers, and before long Pete’s quick ear detected a stirring in it. Suddenly a voice spoke softly:
“Don’t say a word or appear surprised, I’m going to help you out, just because I’m a Yankee myself and I know Ramon means to kill you all when he gets a chance.”
Coyote kept a hold on himself, and hardly moving his lips, rejoined in the same cautious tones:
“Who are you?”