The Border Boys Across the Frontier | Page 2

the right direction," he said. "Nothing
for it but to keep on going; eh, Pete?"

"When yer cain't turn back, 'keep on goin's' a good word," assented the
philosophical cow-puncher of the Agua Caliente, stroking his
sun-bleached yellow moustache and untangling a knot in his pony's
mane.
"It's up to us to get somewhere where there is water pretty quick," put
in Walt Phelps; "the last time I hit the little drinking canteen I noticed
that there wasn't an awful lot left in the others."
"No, and the stock's feelin' it, too," grunted Pete, digging his big,
blunt-roweled spurs into his buckskin cayuse.
Followed by Jack on his Firewater, the professor on his queer, bony
steed as angular as himself, Ralph on Petticoats--of exciting
memory,--and Walt Phelps on his big gray, they pushed on.
The heat was blistering. In fact, to any one less accustomed to the
arduous intensity of the sun's rays in this part of the country, it would
have proved almost insupportable. But our party was pretty well
seasoned by this time.
All of them wore the broad, leather-banded sombreros of the plainsmen
except Professor Wintergreen, who had invested himself in a gigantic
pith sun-helmet, from beneath which his spectacled countenance peered
out, as Ralph said, "Like a toad peeking out from a mushroom." For the
rest, the boys wore leather "chaps," blue shirts open at the neck, with
loosely knotted red handkerchiefs about their throats. The latter were
both to keep the sun off the back of their necks and to serve as
protection for their mouths and nostrils against the dust in case of
necessity,--as for example, when they struck a patch of burning, biting
alkali. Of this pungent stuff, they had already encountered one or two
stretches, and had been glad to muffle up the lower part of their faces as
they rode through it.
As for Coyote Pete, those who have followed his earlier experiences
are pretty familiar with that redoubtable cow-puncher's appearance;
suffice it to say, therefore, that, as usual, he wore his battered leather
"chaps," faded blue shirt, and his big sombrero with the silver stars

affixed to the stamped leather band. In a holster he carried a rifle, as did
the rest of the party, as well as his well-worn revolver. The others had
provided themselves with similar weapons, although theirs glittered in
blatant newness beside Pete's battered, but well-cleaned and oiled,
"shootin' iron."
While they are pressing onward, with the Hachetas lying like a dim,
blue cloud far behind them, let us tell the reader something about the
quest that brings our party into the midst of this inhospitable place. As
readers of "The Border Boys on the Trail" know, Professor
Wintergreen had accompanied Jack Merrill and Ralph Stetson from
Stonefell College, some weeks before, to spend a vacation on the Agua
Caliente Ranch, belonging to Jack's father. The professor, as well as
being on a vacation, was in a sense on a mission, for he bore with him
the commission of a well-known institute of science in the East to
investigate some of the mesas of this part of the world, and also to
procure relics and trophies of the vanished race that once inhabited
them, and accurate measurements of the strange formations.
Since their arrival at the ranch, some weeks before, events had so
shaped themselves as to render the immediate undertaking of his
mission impossible. The descent of Black Ramon de Barros on the
ranch, as we have related, and the subsequent abduction of the boys to
the old Mission across the border, had so fully occupied their attention,
that all thought of the professor's errand had been lost sight of.
With Black Ramon, thanks to the boys, forever banished from his
cattle-rustling raids, and the subsequent tranquility of routine life, had
come a recollection of the professor's quest. Coyote Pete, a few days
before this story opens, had volunteered to act as guide to the professor
and his party to a mesa seldom visited except by wandering Indians and
occasional cow-punchers. This was the Haunted Mesa, the location of
which was so difficult to reach that previous relic-hunting expeditions
had not included it in their travels.
Mr. Merrill was the more willing to allow the boys to go along, as he
had been suddenly summoned into Chihuahua province, in Mexico, by
reports of trouble at a mine--The Esmeralda--he owned there. Rumors

of an insurrection had reached him--an insurrection which meant great
peril to American interests. He had, therefore, lost no time in setting
out to ascertain the true state of affairs at his mine, which, while a small
one, was still likely to develop in time into an extremely valuable
property.
Leaving the ranch in charge of Bud Wilson, he had started for the
Mexican country without waiting