"Thar you go," laughed Pete. "Giv" you boys a cayuse, an" you"ll ride him to death. I jes" mentioned that a lying, whisky-drinking old Injun had sprung a pipe-dream about a lost river, and thar you go navagatin"
it in a Coney Island steamboat."
The boys could not help bursting into a laugh at the cow-puncher"s whimsical way of talking. The professor joined in, too, for none realized better than he did that for a moment he, too, had been quite carried away by the idea.
"I expect that it is as you say, Pete," he agreed. "These Indians are most unreliable people. If anybody was to believe all the weird legends an Indian tells him, he would spend the best part of his life on wild-goose chases. Why, the Indians of the Mojave desert in California can even tell a circ.u.mstantial story about a buried city of Mojave. According to their contention, a great flood, occurring long ago, wiped it out and buried it in the sands of the desert."
"Has any one ever tried to find it?" asked Jack.
"Many expeditions have been fitted out for the purpose, my boy," was the rejoinder, "but so far no trace has ever been found of it, and it is, no doubt, like the lost river of which Pete was telling us, a mere myth."
"I didn"t say it was a miff," protested Pete. "I jes" said I didn"t believe it."
The remainder of that afternoon was spent in making more measurements and sketches of the interesting mesa, and the boys, on their own account, conducted a search for a possible entrance to the lost river.
But, as may be supposed, they found none.
"I guess as romance-seekers we are not a success," said Jack, as at sun-down they prepared to quit. "Just think, what a proud bunch we"d have been if we could say we--The Border Boys--discovered the lost river of the mesa dwellers."
"We might be a sorry bunch, too," amended the practical Walt. "I tell you, Jack, I don"t want anything to do with lost rivers, especially when they are underground."
"Walt, the spirit of adventure is lacking in you," laughed Jack.
"You"d never make a Don Quixote----"
"A donkey who?" asked Walt innocently.
"Oh, you"re the limit," chuckled Ralph, going off into a roar of laughter at the ranch boy"s expense.
That evening the animals" pasture was changed to the opposite side of the mesa, where they could find fresh gra.s.s. The camp, however, was left as it was. After supper watches were a.s.signed, as usual, the latter part of the night guardianship falling to Coyote Pete and Jack once more. When, soon after midnight, Walt and Ralph Stetson aroused them, there was nothing much to report except that One Spot had engaged in a spirited kicking match with his brethren. Outside of that, all had been, to quote Walt:
"Quiet along the Mesomac."
"We"ll patrol round the whole mesa," said Coyote Pete, as he and Jack shouldered their rifles, "meeting by the stock on the other side."
After a few words more, the two sentries strode off into the darkness in different directions, meeting, as arranged, by the stock. Neither had anything to report, and in this way they kept up the night watch for an hour or more. They had met for the sixth time by the tents containing their sleeping comrades, when from the opposite side of the mesa came a shrill neigh of terror, followed by sounds of wild galloping and snorting.
"Something"s up!" shouted Pete, as, with his rifle in readiness and followed closely by Jack, he tore around the mesa to ascertain the cause of the trouble.
As the two sentries emerged into view of the spot in which the stock had been tethered, they came upon a spectacle which, for a moment, caused them to recoil as abruptly as if a deep canyon had suddenly opened up before them.
CHAPTER VII.
WHAT CAME ACROSS THE DESERT.
That which brought the two--the plainsman and the lad--to such an amazed halt was nothing more nor less than the sight of the huge forms which had appeared to Jack in the sand-storm and which had given them such an alarm the night before, and which doubtless, as they now viewed it in a flash of intuition, had almost stampeded the stock while their owners were exploring the top of the mesa. But Coyote Pete was not the man to remain long rooted in astonishment.
With one quick jerk, he raised his rifle, and a vivid spatter of fire followed. As the report died out, one of the great forms sank to the ground with a scream that sounded almost human. The others glided off in the same direction as they had the night before, and vanished in the same mysterious way, before the thunderstruck Jack could get a shot at them.
"They"re real, at any rate," exclaimed Coyote Pete, showing in his tone of relief, that until the great shadowy ma.s.s had sunk before his bullet, he had had some doubts of that fact.
"W-w-w-w-what is it?" came a frightened voice at their elbows, and, looking around, they saw the professor, in pajamas striped like a barber"s pole, gazing apprehensively about him. Close behind him came Ralph Stetson and Walt, their weapons clasped determinedly, and evidently ready to face whatever emergency the sudden shot had betokened.
"Yes, what is it--Indians or bears?" demanded Ralph, entirely forgetful of the fact that bears are not wont, as a rule, to roam the barren desert.
"Dunno, but we"ll see in a minute," said the cow-puncher, in answer to the excited questions. Followed by the rest, he made his way forward to where the great bulk that he had shot lay still and motionless on the ground. Even Jack owned to a slight feeling of apprehension as they neared the great form,--harmless as, whatever it might be, it had now become.
As for the stock, they were still plunging wildly about and snorting in a terrified fashion, and, had it not been for their stout raw-hide tethers, they would undoubtedly have stampeded.
Drawing a match, Pete held it high as he neared the stricken bulk outstretched before them. The next minute he gave an astonished cry:
"A camel!"
"A _what_!" gasped the entire group in unison.
"Jes" what I said, a backterian camel," reiterated Pete, striking another match.
They could all see then that he spoke the truth, astounding as it seemed. The creature that lay still before them, a bullet through its brain, was a veritable, undoubted specimen of the Bactrian species.
"But--but--great heavens!" cried Jack, hardly able to believe his eyes, "how,--what----"
"What on earth is a camel doing out here on the New Mexican desert?"
the professor finished for him.
"Going eight days without a drink," suggested Ralph in an undertone; but none of the party was in a mood for humor just then.
It was Pete who solved the mystery.
"I"ve got it," he exclaimed, "and I"m a plum-busted idjut not to have thought uv it afore; I"ve hearn about "em often enough. This here backterian camel must be one of that bunch of Circus Jesse"s."
"Circus Jesse! Who was he, or she?" asked Jack.
"Why, he was a feller what owned a big eastern circus, but owned a ranch out here as well. It struck him one time that if camels was good for transportation purposes over the Sahara desert they ought ter be just as good here. So, what does he do but start a camel express from Maguez ter Amadillo over the border, with some of the backterians frum his circus."
"And didn"t it work?" asked Ralph.
"No. That is, it did fer a while, till ther novelty wore off, and then folks went back ter ther old reliable mule or burro. Circus Jesse, he got so blamed sore, that one fine day he turned the whole shootin"
match of his backterians loose, and packin" his trunk, let the country, and resolved in futur" ter stick ter his circus."
"Was that long ago?" asked Jack. "I shouldn"t have thought the creatures would have lived long without being recaptured."
"It"s about five years since Jesse got out, I reckon," rejoined Pete, "an" fer a while camel-hunting was a popular sport. By an" by, however, they got so wary no one could get near "em, and, except fer a scare they"d throw inter a prospector now and ag"in, we never heard no more of "em. I"d clean fergotten all about "em, till I made this one inter cold backterian meat."
"I suppose they found food and water here and regarded the Mesa as their own property," declared Jack.
"That"s about it. This is a place that"s seldom visited, and I guess they just figgered out that they"d found a happy home."
"But what became of the rest of them?" asked Ralph, who had been apprised by Jack of the strange vanishment of the dead creature"s mates.