CHAPTER XVII.
THE WHISTLE OF PASSING BULLETS
"They seem to be gaining on us!" said Merritt uneasily. "Hadn't we better romp ahead a little faster, boys?"
"Sure! Hit up the pace all you want!" It was neither Rob nor Andy who made this game reply, but Tubby! This response drew Rob's heart closer to the fat chum than ever before. A fellow who could show such nerve would have the best chance in the world to become a first-class scout, when once he woke up and began to study as he should.
They proceeded to coax their horses to pick up some, and for a time the gallant animals did manage more than to hold their own with the pursuers; but when half an hour had passed even Tubby could see that the distance separating them from that hustling lot of hard riders did not appear to be quite as great as after the spurt.
"Say, do we fight for it if we are cornered?" Andy wanted to know. When the patrol leader turned to glance back at him, he saw that while the boy's face might be somewhat pale, there was a dogged look around the eyes that spoke volumes.
"Well, they say that Boy Scouts never should fight unless driven into a corner, where they have to defend themselves to save their own lives, or the lives of others," Rob shouted back.
"That settles it, then," Andy replied. And Rob could see that considerable of his anxiety must have been connected with his doubt as to whether it should be their duty as lovers of peace to give up and surrender without striking a blow, or resist; for he even seemed tickled with what Rob had told him.
No one asked Tubby what he thought about matters. It was enough for them to know that the fat and clumsy chum was there in his saddle still, and managing by some means to keep close behind them. His horse must have suffered exceedingly, bearing all that heavy load; and it was lucky Rob had been wise enough to select an especially sturdy beast when thinking of Tubby.
The pursuers were not all in a bunch, but scattered, according to the ability of their mounts to maintain the killing pace. Undoubtedly, they were urged on by the big cruel Mexican spurs, which, of course, every cavalryman wore on his boot heels.
This might seem to be a trifling matter; but Rob knew better. If it really came to a running fight, as seemed likely, they would profit by the fact that only a minority of their pursuers could fire upon them, the rest being either too far off, or else fearful lest they might hit their comrades in advance.
Meanwhile they were approaching the big smoke that kept rising ahead, and which must mean a burning bridge on the railroad, and perhaps a stalled train into the bargain.
Rob found himself wondering what sort of reception they would receive should they find a party of Villa's rebels holding out against the Regulars. He had already laid his plans and communicated them to his chums, so that each would know just what was expected of him in the emergency.
Already several shots had been fired by the leading horsemen, but as they were still pretty far distant, and as it is next to impossible to do any serious business with a gun while going at such headlong speed, of course these were sent after the fugitives more as an act of bravado and alarm, than in the hope that any bullet might find its mark.
At the same time it was not very pleasant for the scouts to hear those leaden messengers singing so merrily through the air over their heads, – for all the world like so many bees or locusts, as they afterward decided.
Every time a gun sounded, Tubby involuntarily ducked his head and tried to flatten himself out on the neck of his horse, an utterly impossible thing, on account of his build. He seemed to think that they must always pick him out for a target, because he offered such a fine mark.
"Guess you'd do the same, too," he called out to Andy, when he saw the grin on the other's face as he turned in time to see one of these performances, "if you made a shining mark like I do! And being in the rear adds to my chance of stopping one of those lead pills. Anyway, I'm going to do the trick right along, no matter what you think, Andy Bowles!"
"And you're right about that, Tubby!" called Merritt. "Even when you lie down flat you make a better mark than most of us do sitting up!"
"Keep your breath, fellows; you may need all of it!" Rob called out just then, and this stopped the controversy.
Rob urged his horse alongside that of the Mexican guide.
"How are we going to come out of it, Lopez?" he asked anxiously. "Will they get at us before we make the smoke?"
The experienced eye of the other had before now accurately measured the distances; and doubtless he was figuring matters out at the time the scout broke in with this leading question.
"If no bad luck," Lopez assured him, "we surely come to the burning bridge before the wolf pack doubles us up, young señor."
"By bad luck you mean an accident?" Rob demanded.
Lopez shrugged his shoulders and cast a swift, meaning look back at poor fat Tubby, who was belaboring his tired mount with the flat of one hand, and urging the beast on and on. Evidently the guide had been half expecting an accident to happen in this quarter for some time, and was, in fact, surprised that the clumsy scout had held on so long; but then, he did not know what a stubborn nature Tubby possessed.
"Si, señor, a horse might slip, and toss his rider; or it may be a passing bullet happen to go in the wrong place and do damage. Who can tell? But let us hope it will not so bad as that prove. We are doing well; and the smoke, it is not so far away as it seems!"
All of which must have been poor satisfaction to Rob, who from that moment found himself enduring new agonies every time he twisted around to see whether Tubby still held forth.
The horses were reeking with sweat, and while Rob did not pretend to be as experienced in such matters as a cow puncher would be, still even he understood that this sort of thing could not be kept up much longer.
Only for the presence of that smoke and the hope that they might run upon some friendly rebels at the burning bridge, he would have made up his mind that there was no other way for them to escape save by turning at bay and engaging in a regular fight with those persistent pursuers, who kept dogging the heels of their horses mile after mile, bent on running them down.
"What do you think of our chances for finding some of Villa's men ahead?" Rob asked the guide several minutes later. They were still keeping up a furious pace and fairly holding their own, though none of the horses in the race could be said to be running as fast as half an hour previously.
"It is an open chance," Lopez replied with another shrug.
"But the Federals set the bridge on fire; and after doing that they would hardly hang around, because this part of the country must be swarming with rebels, who would be drawn to the burning bridge by the smoke. Is that the way you figure it out, Lopez?"
"You have said what was in my mind, young señor," came the reply; "and that is why I have kept moving on all this while. Had it not been the hope of finding friends, before now they must have felt our lead."
"Then we're doing the right thing in trying to get to the bridge before letting them come up on us," Rob decided. And after that he bent his whole energy to carrying out the plan he had arranged.
He even fell back so that he could ride alongside Tubby; for Rob had often heard that no chain can be any stronger than its weakest link; and this must surely mean Tubby, in their case. If any accident befell the party, the chances were as ten to one it would spring from the fat scout.
And so Rob, believing in being prepared to meet things as they come along, even went so far as to figure out just what his course of action must be in case Tubby gave signs of falling off his horse, or the animal tripped in its headlong flight.
"It's only a little further, Tubby, so try your best to hold out!" he kept saying. "See, there's a spur of the hill jutting out, and the railroad comes around that. On the other side must be the Carmen River, where the bridge that is burning crosses. Just one more push and we'll be there in great shape. You're doing fine, I want to tell you, Tubby; I never thought you had it in you; and we're bound to get through this ride all right, believe me!"
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.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AT THE BURNING BRIDGE
It was really only the bad marksmanship of the men among the rocks some distance away, and the fact that the boys were now strung out in a disorganized line as they drew near the stalled train that saved the scouts from disaster, just as they saw a haven of refuge at hand.
The bullets continued to whine around them in a most disagreeable manner; while some, falling short, tore up the ground, causing little patches of dust to leap upward where they struck.
Tubby must have lived hours during those few but exciting minutes. Then, to his great satisfaction he found himself riding behind the cars of the train, where there were scores of people hiding, men, women and children, fugitives from the city that had fallen into Villa's hands once more. Some may have fled for fear that the rebel leader would confiscate all their possessions, because they had been on friendly terms with the troops of Huerta when the Government forces held the capital of Chihuahua State.
No one could say with what relief Tubby checked the onward rush of his charger; Rob did not have to come to his assistance this time, for the exhausted boy actually fell from the saddle, being caught by several grim rebels, who had come crowding around to find out who these parties were, and how it came that American soldiers dared invade the sacred soil of Mexico, – which, had it been an actual fact, would have served to unite both hostile factions against Uncle Sam's boys in khaki.
But Lopez had unlimbered his tongue by now, and was rattling off the greatest lot of jargon in Spanish the boys had ever listened to. They could only understand a word here and there; but that did not matter, for as he talked the guide made many gestures, and it was possible to tell what he was saying from these alone.
Many of the rebels crowded close around them, forming a circle, ten deep. Others had hurried to exchange shots with the late pursuers of the boys, and opened such a warm fire that the Regulars quickly turned and fled, doubtless to join later on with their comrades among the rocks, and plot to overwhelm the defenders of the stalled train.
When the name of General Villa was mentioned several times, and always with a grand sweep of the arm in the direction of the four scouts, Rob knew that Lopez was surely "spreading it on pretty thick." He must be telling the crowd that these gringo lads were great friends of the commanding general, and that they had come all the way down here, hundreds, yes, thousands of miles, just to see him, and tell him what a great patriot he was. And if this were so, then they must be looked on as comrades by every man who fought under Villa the Great; who would be very angry with any wretch so unlucky as to raise a finger to offend those whose friendship he valued so highly.
Of course such talk created no end of a sensation among the rough men who were enlisted in the cause of the revolutionists. They feared their commanding general more than any man on earth; and after hearing what Lopez had to say about these American boys, they were ready to give them a wild cheer; especially when told that the newcomers stood ready to cast their lot in with them, and help disperse the enemy.
When the guide, turning to Rob, told him about what he had promised the rebels in return for the protection they were giving the fugitives, the patrol leader looked a bit grave.
"Of course we're willing to do all we can, you understand, Lopez, to help our new friends out; and if anybody is wounded, we know a whole lot about how to take care of bad hurts; in other ways, too, we'll do all we can; but except as a very last resort, I wouldn't want to shoot direct at those men over there. We're not soldiers, even if we do wear a uniform that seems to say we are; and the last thing a Boy Scout wants to do is to fight. But wait and see how things turn out. There are lots of ways we can assist without actually using our guns against the Regulars; though if it came to the worst, and they were charging this fort, you'd soon see how we'd pitch in and do our part."
After that Rob and his three chums noticed that they were being observed with even more curiosity. Later on it turned out that the cunning Lopez, meaning to do things wholesale while about it, had hinted that these young fellows might be secret messengers to Villa coming from Washington; and that there was a strong chance that the American Government was meaning finally to befriend the rebels, even allowing them to get arms at will from across the border. In this way they might be helped to hasten the fall of Huerta, who had never been recognized as president by the new administration.
Meanwhile, the fire of the Federals up there among the rocks had entirely ceased. Tubby, not being versed in such things, believed that the coming of reinforcements, in the shape of four boys and one man, must have given the Federals what he chose to call "cold feet," and that they had betaken themselves off. Rob, however, knew differently, for by using that convenient field glass of his, he could see that there were several men still up there. Evidently some sort of new scheme was being figured out by those who were besieging the train; and unless the defenders managed to learn its nature in advance, they might be given a disagreeable surprise shortly.
This gave Rob an idea.
Just as he had told Lopez, while the scouts would not like to be asked to fire on the enemy, unless the defenders of the train were hard pushed, there were plenty of ways whereby wide-awake young chaps, such as they were known to be, might make themselves useful.
He saw such an opening right then, and quickly began to look into it more closely to find out if it were indeed practicable.
Examining the topography of the country through his glasses, Rob found that it was possible for a smart fellow to climb up to a certain point, where he could observe all that was going on beyond, and doubtless find plenty of chances to transmit his discoveries to the other scouts below by means of a signal flag and the wigwag code. There was Tubby, who had done himself more credit with signal work than along any other line connected with scout activities; why should he not keep himself in readiness to receive whatever news the vidette on the pinnacle of rock chose to send?
After speaking about this idea to Lopez, and asking him to pass it along to the rather fierce-looking individual who seemed to be in command of the rebels, Rob sought out the fat chum.
As more than a full hour had passed since their arrival at the still burning railroad bridge, it was to be hoped that Tubby had, in some measure at least, recovered from his state of exhaustion, and that he would be in fit condition to manage his end of the receiving line.
As he drew near the spot where he had discovered Tubby squatted like a big bull frog on the ground, Rob had to smile to notice how carefully the fat scout had folded his blanket several times and used it as a seat; for Rob knew the reason why.
"Now I wonder what he is looking at so seriously," he said to himself on drawing closer. "It can't be either the magic ring that's going to make General Villa fall on our necks and embrace us, nor yet that paper Uncle Mark gave us for his old time friend; because I happen to have both on my person right now."
His curiosity aroused by Tubby's seeming fit of abstraction, Rob crept softly up behind the other and peered over his shoulder. What he saw caused him to chuckle, as though more amused than ever.
Tubby had something in his hand, at which he was staring, all the while muttering to himself; and Rob could even catch what he was saying. It ran something like this:
"That's a bully clew, all right, all right. Rob says so, and he ought to know. And you needn't think that I'm going to let the whole thing drop, just because I've been too busy with other jobs to follow it up. Just you wait till I get back, and see if I don't find the identical brace and bit that coward used to bore a hole in the bottom of Rob's sailboat, and make this creased shaving in the shape of a curl. And say, bet you that when I happen to mention the name of Max Ramsay I'm not very far away from the guilty party; though I ought not to accuse anybody till I'm dead sure.
"Oh! hello! that you, Rob? What's new? I was only making sure that I hadn't gone and lost that marked shaving we found in your boat, you remember, and which some fine day is going to make some feller I know start to shivering in his shoes. Sit down with me, won't you? I'd offer you a bit of my cushion, but seems like I can't spare it just now; you understand why."
"Yes, that's all right, Tubby, and small blame to you if you do feel badly. It was a tough ride for us all; and yet we ought to thank our lucky stars that we found a chance to give our pursuers the slip without a fight. But I wanted to ask if you thought you could bother taking a few short messages with the wigwag flags?"
Tubby became interested at once, and almost forgot how tired and sore he felt.
"Sure I can, and only too glad to be doing something in my particular line, Rob," he hastened to remark. "And it's just fine of you to come to me, when there's Merritt and Andy around. But what's doing? Have the Feds been sending messages, and do you want me to intercept what they say? Is that the game, Rob?"
"You're away off there, Tubby," replied the patrol leader; "but if you listen I'll try to explain. The idea struck me that perhaps I might manage to climb to that high rock you can see up there, and watch what the enemy is doing; because they must be up to some mischief, they keep so quiet lately. And after I get there you must stand by to take what I send and write it down. Have the other boys around to help, because three heads are better than one in receiving. If you should get all muddled up one of the others may carry the message through."
"Whee! that's a mighty clever scheme of yours, Rob; and if I wasn't so beastly tired and lame I'd ask to be allowed to go along with you. But p'raps it's better not, for the climbing would be tough, and I'm nearly all in for one day. But please don't go off alone that way, Rob, without carrying your gun along. Some of the tricky Regulars might manage to cut you off from us. And then wouldn't you be in a nice scrape without some means for defending yourself? You will, Rob, won't you?"
"Why, yes, I had thought it might be a bit foolish not to, with a chance always hanging over my head that I'd need something like a gun. But you can keep right on sitting here if you like, only turn around so you will have that crag in full view. Of course I don't know just how long it will take me to climb up there, because if they glimpse me they'll as like as not keep firing every time I show my head. But I ought to know how to creep, scout fashion. I've practiced it enough, goodness knows. Is it all understood, and have you the other flags handy? I want to take two along with me, after I've fastened them to a couple of sticks so I can wave them the right way, though I may only need one."
Tubby told him that all was clear, and Rob promised to send Merritt around to fix the other flags.
"When the time comes for you to send the first signal, guess I'll be able to get on my feet," the fat scout said as Rob moved away; "and if I can't make it alone, I reckon the boys'll give me a boost. You put your faith in me to get whatever you wigwag, Rob; but take mighty good care of yourself, hear?"
So the patrol leader went away, bearing the two white and red flags, which he meant to rig out with short staves before he started on his perilous mission to the crag that jutted out far up the slope. From there a splendid view could undoubtedly be obtained, not only of the stalled train and the burning bridge, but also of the Federal cavalrymen who were keeping out of sight among the small arroyos along the hillside.