No doubt this sort of encouraging talk did more than a little to keep Tubby from throwing up the sponge entirely; for he was close upon the point of complete exhaustion, and ready to own himself "all in."
"Try to think and tell me, Tubby," Rob went on earnestly, "where you've got those signal flags you brought all the way down here, because you said they might come in handy. I can use one right now, I believe."
"Reach in that pocket on the side of my bag toward you, Rob," replied Tubby in a gasping whisper. "You ought to find the lot there."
This Rob managed to do in spite of the fact that both horses were galloping at headlong speed.
Just then they cleared the point of the hill that jutted out close to the railroad track; and there in front of them lay the cause of the big smoke. The bridge was afire, just as they had believed. There was also a train stalled on the side near them, with its engine headed toward Juarez. Doubtless this was the one of which the boys had heard, which, starting from Chihuahua, laden with refugee Mexican families wanting to seek shelter over in Texas, had been lost somewhere on the way, held up by burned bridges, and possibly by other things in the way of damage done to the locomotive by the Federal's marauding cavalry parties.
As soon as Rob could manage to see what lay ahead, he felt cheered by the sight; for behind the cars he discovered dozens of men with guns, who seemed to be making a barrier of the train and exchanging long distance shots with some enemy perched upon the higher ground, undoubtedly Federals.
There seemed nothing for the scouts to do but to join their fortunes with those men of Villa's command who were holding the Regulars at bay. So, without slackening the speed of their horses a particle, the little party galloped forward, Rob leading the van and wildly waving one of the signal flags, which, being white with a small red center, could be looked upon as a flag of truce, and would surely keep the rebels from firing on them.
It must have astonished those fellows who were making a rampart of the stalled train to discover thus a party wearing khaki uniforms so like those of the American soldiers across the border, coming at headlong speed toward them, and being fired after by a pack of pursuers whom they readily recognized to be the regular troops of Huerta!
And since all enemies of the prevailing government must be looked on as friends to their cause, the Constitutionalists, as the rebels liked to call themselves, made no attempt to halt the advance of the Boy Scouts. They held their fire, waiting until the hard-pressed fugitives could reach shelter, when explanations might be in order.
But the unseen Regulars perched among the rocks on the hillside must have discovered that those they were engaged in fighting seemed to be receiving unexpected reinforcements, for they turned their attention to the oncoming riders, and once more the nerve-racking zip-zip of passing bullets gave Tubby a cold chill.