THE GRINGOES MOVE.

From without the door there now came shouts of baffled rage. The Mexicans were finding out, as their kind has done before, that a party of brave Americans is more than a match for twice their number in a fight. Moreover, thanks mainly to Jack’s presence of mind in slipping out of the house and performing scout work, our party was strongly entrenched. The door was stout, and the iron bar within solid. There was no apparent way of forcing an entrance by battering it down, for the landing was too small to use a “ram” effectually.

“Hooray, we’ve got ’em beaten!” cried Ralph thoughtlessly.

Coyote flashed a scornful eye on him.

“Beaten!” he scoffed, “we ain’t got ’em beaten till we’re out of this place and miles on our way. Why, if they kain’t do anything else they kin starve us out if they want to.”

“That’s so,” assented Ralph sorrowfully, and then with a violent twist of spirits, “I guess we’re goners.”

“There, go galloping off the reservation agin,” struck in Pete; “we ain’t goners yit by a long shot, but we’ve got a powerful lot of work afore us, as the government said when they tackled digging that Panama Canal.”

All now became silent once more, or at least the boys could hear nothing. Evidently the Mexicans had withdrawn for a council of war.

“This time they’ll be in dead earnest,” opined the cow-puncher, “so keep a smart eye open for ’em everywhere.”

Hanging breathlessly on the least sound, the besieged party waited for the first sign of the coming attack. It was a long time in making itself manifest, and when it did, it was for a moment puzzling enough. It came in the form of a noise from above.

“Somebody’s on the roof!” exclaimed Pete. “The foxy varmints! I wonder they didn’t think of that before.”

The roof of the lonely rancho was flat, and soon they could hear several footsteps on it as their besiegers paced about.

“What are they going to do?” asked Ralph in a puzzled tone.

“Not hard to guess,” rejoined the professor, “cut a hole in it, I guess, and then they’ll have us completely at their mercy.”

“If we let them,” said Jack, “but why not try to escape by the trap, while they are busy on the roof?”

“That might be a good idea if it warn’t likely that they have the foot of the ladder guarded, or most probably have taken it down,” said Coyote Pete; “no, you’ll have to guess agin, Jack. Think uv something new and original.”

“I might say try that door, but I guess that’s guarded, too.”

“Not a doubt of it,” was the reply.

“Tell you what we’ll do,” exclaimed Jack suddenly, struck with an inspiration, “we’ll try the walls. There may be a secret passage or a concealed window in them some place.”

The cow-puncher laughed.

“This ain’t a story book, son, and I never heard of such things outside of one. Lady Gwendolens in real life come out by the fire escape more often than by the old secret passage or the haunted wing.”

Undismayed, however, Jack set about his task. He was in the midst of it, and had met with no success,—not that he had seriously hoped for any,—when a sudden sound pierced the darkened garret.

The noise was that of axes cutting into the roof.

As Jack listened a slight shudder ran through him. From that point of vantage the outlaws could shoot them down as they wished, and there would not be much chance of using their four remaining shots in return. By this time Jack had reached the spot by the big stone chimney from which they had taken the stone used to weight the table above the trap door.

With a rather vague idea of using some more of the stones as weapons, he started pulling down the remaining loose ones. He had been at this work but a few minutes when he gave a sudden cry of triumph.

“Look! Boys! Look here!” he cried, amazedly.

They scurried to his side to find him pointing into a black, yawning mouth, evidently intended originally for a fireplace but left unfinished, as the stones they had used now testified.

“It’s big enough to swallow a horse almost,” cried Ralph.

“It’s big enough to save our lives, maybe,” grunted Pete, “but maybe it’s only a blind lead, and may come out nowhere. In that case a fellow at the bottom of a well would be better off than the chap in there, for ther’d be no way of gitting out uv that chimney once you got in, and—Jumping Jupiter! Come back, boy!”

But it was too late. While Coyote Pete had been talking, Jack had slipped into the fireplace, and clutching the rough sides of the chimney had taken the daring drop.

The others listened above in breathless anxiety, and then, to their infinite relief, a voice trickled up to them from the depths.

“It’s all right, boys! Come on, but take it easy, for I knocked all the skin off my shins in my hurry.”

The blows on the roof were by this time becoming louder, and they could distinctly hear the sound of splintering wood as the axe blades cut into it.

“They’ll hev pecked through that in ten minutes, now,” said Pete, getting over to one side of the fireplace, “come on, boys. Be on your way.”

But the boys insisted on the professor going first, now that they knew the drop was safe enough. Not without misgivings, to which he was too brave to give utterance. Professor Wintergreen, scientist and writer, cast himself into that black hole in the garret of the lonely rancho. An instant later, after a prodigious scraping and bumping, word came up that he, too, was safe. Ralph and Walt came next, the former softly humming:—

“I don’t know where I’m goin’, but I’m on my way.”

Coyote Pete came last; and now we shall follow the party, leaving the Mexicans still hacking away at the roof. It is a trip worth taking, too, for at the bottom of the chimney an astonishing condition of things prevailed.

The smoke duct led not into a cellar or into a blind hole, but instead, Jack, on alighting, had found himself, soot covered and scratched and torn, in a large open fireplace in a small room. As he made his sensational entrance there was a sudden sharp scream from a corner of the room and a female figure clad in white sprang up.

For an instant a dreadful fear that he had alighted in some sort of a trap flashed into Jack’s mind. But the next instant he realized that the alarmed girl was none other than the senorita, and that the room into which he had fallen was the one selected as her prison.

“Hush, senorita!” exclaimed the boy, as soon as he had given the signal to his comrades above that all was well, “do not fear me. I am not one of your enemies but a friend, an American. My companions are with me,—er—er—that is, they will be.”

“Oh, senor!” cried the girl in English, “what a dreadful fright you gave me. You—you, if you will excuse me, you are so black. I suppose it’s the soot in the chimney.”

Jack could hardly refrain from smiling, as, for the first time, he bethought himself of the alarming figure he must present.

“I’m not as black as I’m painted, senorita, really, I’m not. Nor are these two new arrivals chimney sweeps, but young American gentlemen,” he added with a sweeping bow, as Walt Phelps and Ralph popped out of the chimney. “Allow me to present myself. I am Jack Merrill, and these are my friends, Walt Phelps, of New Mexico, and Ralph Stetson, of New York. Not forgetting,” he added merrily, as the professor straightened up from an instinctive brushing of his clothes, “our instructor and—er—er—chaperone, Professor Wintergreen, of Stonefell College, and,” as the other member of the party appeared, “Mister Peter de Peyster, of the Merrill Ranch.”

“At your service, miss,” said Coyote Pete with a low, sweeping bow and a deep flourish of his sombrero, to which even in his fall he had clung.

“Oh, I feel safer now,” cried the girl delightedly, “but,” and she clasped her hands, “Madre de Dios, what I have passed through! I was summoned to my garden this evening by a decoy message, that one of the good sisters at the convent wished to see me. I had hardly set foot on the path when I was seized and carried off!”

“The rest of your story we know, senorita,” said Jack earnestly.

“You know it?” repeated the girl in an amazed tone, “but, senor, I do not understand.”

“I will explain later,” said Jack, “at least, we all hope to have the pleasure of doing so. I may add that I overheard the ruffians, your captors, discussing the matter while I was hiding in a pig pen.”

The senorita’s large dark eyes grew larger than ever at this. She began to think Jack a very peculiar young person to come sliding down chimneys into rooms and to choose to eavesdrop on brigands from pig pens. But she made no comment, and the talk at once turned to the subject of escape.

The door of the room was of oak, barred and bolted on the outside, and impregnable. But the window, high up in the wall though it was, appeared to be just about large enough to squeeze through, ample enough even for Coyote Pete, who was the largest of the party.

“Reckon we can reach it by putting this chair on that table yonder,” declared Pete, “but we’ll have ter look slippy, for those chaps will be through the roof before long, and when they discover we’re gone and see the hole in the chimney, they’ll guess the route we’ve taken.”

When the table had been dragged over under the window and the chair placed upon it, Pete clambered up and found that he could easily reach the aperture.

“It’s all clear outside, too, and the corral isn’t more than a few rods away,” he announced. “Boys, if we have any sort of luck we may get out of this and save the young lady. I’ll go first, for it’s a longish drop to the ground. Those that foller kin land on my shoulders.”

The next instant he raised his lithe, ranch-toughened form and wriggled through the hole. In a flash he was gone.

“Your turn next, senorita,” said Jack; “allow me to assist you.”

The brave girl made no foolish hesitation about obeying. With a graceful little leap she was on the table and by Jack’s side. In a jiffy he had assisted her through and she was caught by Coyote Pete outside. Next came the professor; following him, Walt and Ralph. As Walt alighted, he was ordered to creep over to the corral, keeping cautiously in the shadow of the willows. Once in the corral he was to get all their horses and a saddle for the senorita, if possible, selecting any one from the two or three hanging on the fence after the shiftless Mexican fashion. Presently Jack joined him at the risky work, having been the last to emerge from the window.

They had got the last of their own horses and had selected one for the senorita, when there came a loud shout from behind them followed by a volley of shots.

A dreadful fear shot into Jack’s heart. Had they been discovered?