Jack had an uneasy sense that they were being scrutinized as they ate, by some unseen pair of eyes, and once looking up quickly he caught, or thought he did, a glimpse of the woman’s print gown slipping from a shuttered window. Jack was not a boy to make a mountain out of a mole hill, though, and concluded that, in all probability, the woman, if she had been looking at them, had been merely curious at the advent of so many strangers.
The rest of the afternoon, for it was late when they concluded their meal, was passed in chatting and lounging about under the trees. Nobody felt inclined for more strenuous occupations. The professor, however, having obtained some old canvas, succeeded in fashioning a rough pair of trousers. They were short and shapeless, and his legs stuck out oddly from them like the drumsticks of a fowl, but they were better than nothing, he thought. As for the boys, they had bought some baggy garments of the Mexican type from the lone rancher, which would have to last them till they reached the nearest town. This, they were informed, was Santa Anita, and was not more than ten miles distant.
An early start being determined on, they sought their beds soon after supper, which consisted of the same fare as the other meal with the addition of some greasy pancakes. Jack ate some of these, not caring for a second dose of the peppery beans and a short time after felt, as he expressed it to himself, “as if a cannon ball were in his midst.”
Perhaps this accounts for his wakefulness, for he found it impossible to sleep after they had all turned in, in one large room,—or, rather, garret,—which formed the second floor. The others flung themselves on the straw, which served for beds, with the lassitude of complete exhaustion, but Jack lay awake, with the pancakes on his chest like a leaden weight. At length he fell into an uneasy slumber, from which he awakened a short time later with a start and a queer feeling that something in which they were vitally interested was going forward.
His first vague feelings rapidly crystallized into more definite shape as, from the yard outside, he could now distinctly hear the trampling of horses’ hoofs. There seemed to be several of them, to judge by the noise.
Moonlight was streaming into the garret through an unglazed opening in the adobe wall, and holding his watch in the rays, Jack saw that it was half an hour after midnight.
“Queer time to receive visitors,” he thought to himself.
At the same time he was conscious of an overwhelming curiosity to ascertain who and what the midnight arrivals could be. The boy had noticed a door in the wall of the garret when they first entered it that evening, and from his previous inspection of the exterior of the house he had formed an idea that it opened upon the top landing of an outside stairway. They had been conducted to the garret, however, by a ladder leading from the room below.
As well as he could judge, the noise came from the opposite side of the house to that on which the door was situated, so there did not seem to be much chance of detection in slipping out of the door, down the outside stairway and, from some point of vantage, seeing what all the racket might portend. There was one possible difficulty in the way, and that was that the door might be locked. But it proved to be unlatched, and Jack, swinging it open, after he had partially dressed, found himself, as he had surmised he would, on a landing or platform at the top of an outside flight of stairs.
In his bare feet, for he had not paused to put on shoes, he slipped as noiselessly as possible down the stairway and presently found himself in the yard. The moonlight cast black and white patterns of the overhanging willows on the ground, but a brief inspection convinced Jack that there was no human being astir but himself on that side of the house.