The Border Boys with the Mexican Rangers

by John Henry Goldfrap

The thought of the appetizing breakfast which had been preparing when he left camp made Jack hungrier than ever, a fact which he had not had time heretofore to realize in the rapid march of events which had occurred since his departure.

The Border Boy looked about him carefully. He realized that if not actually lost, he was in grave danger of being so. The thought quickened his faculties and he set about gauging his position in real earnest. Having, by the aid of the sun, calculated the direction in which the Border Boys’ camp ought to lie, Jack struck out for it. His way led him across a corner of The Baked Land, as he had mentally christened the dreary valley.

He was hastening forward when, suddenly, as he stepped into what seemed a patch of ferns and high grass, the solid ground seemed to vanish from under his feet.

Straight down shot the Border Boy, clutching desperately, as he fell, at projecting rocks and bits of growth; but none of these remained firm in his grasp.

For twenty feet or more the boy fell, and then suddenly his drop was arrested by a heap of dried vegetation at the bottom of the pit or crevasse into which his hurrying feet had led him.

So well had the deceitful growth on the edges of this gulf hidden it, that it was small wonder that Jack, in his haste, had not perceived it. It was dark with a gloomy, damp sort of dusk in the bottom of the crevasse, only a dim, greenish light filtering in from the top.

The reaction from his hopes of a few minutes before almost unnerved the lad for the nonce, but presently he marshalled his faculties and set himself to the task of ascertaining exactly what had happened to him, and what means of escape presented itself.

At a single glance he could see that there was no hope of getting out of the subterranean trap by means of climbing up the walls. Although they were rough and might have afforded a foothold, they overhung the floor of the pit at such an angle that even a fly would have found it difficult to maintain a foothold on them.

Yet rescue himself he must, or face death in that gloomy place. Without any definite idea in his mind, Jack struck off along the bottom of the abyss, which was overgrown with a short, coarse sort of grass of a pallid green color.

As he moved along his progress was suddenly arrested. His foot had encountered something that wriggled and squirmed horribly under his sole. It was a sickening sensation, this, of feeling that squirmy mass under his foot.