CHAPTER III.
A RACE FOR LIFE.
Fast as they raced on, Jack and the cow-puncher seemed to gain on theflying Petticoats with aggravating slowness.
"Consarn that mare, she's plumb locoed, I reckon!" growled Bud, as theyrocketed along, flogging their ponies to renewed efforts with theirheavy quirts.
"She runs like a quarter horse!" gasped Jack, his mouth full of alkalidust; for he had no neck handkerchief to pull up over his mouth,vaquero style.
But with their splendid mounts they were bound to gain on the suddenlycrazed Petticoats, and gradually they drew so close that all threeriders were blanketed by the same cloud of dust.
Behind them came a second great cloud, in which rode a score or more ofriders from Maguez who had hastily mounted and galloped out to see thefun as soon as they heard there was a runaway.
"The canal!" shouted Jack suddenly.
A wandering breeze for a second swept aside the dust cloud beforethem, and showed the fresh, raw wound gaping in the level surface ofthe desert. It was fully thirty feet wide, and as the canal was a newditch, its sides were almost as steep as a wall.
Bud Wilson said nothing, but set his lips grimly. With an imperceptiblemovement of his wrist, he gathered his trailing loop into the air andbegan to whirl it above his head, first slowly and then faster andfaster. The rawhide loop opened out till it was ten feet or more incircumference.
"Now!" he yelled, and at the same instant the released loop wentswirling through the air.
"Yip-yip!" yelled Jack.
Bud had won proudly many a prize for roping, and was the most expertman with the lariat in his part of the West. Had he wished, he couldhave roped the flying Petticoats by the heels. But to have done sowould have been to have brought the crazed pony down with a crash, andprobably have seriously injured, if not killed, her rider.
Swish!
The great loop settled as accurately as if hands had guided it aboutthe maddened pony's neck. Bud took a twist of his end round the saddlehorn and checked the calico.
"Got her!" screamed Jack. "Yi-hi!"
But there came a sudden shout of dismay from Bud.
The calico's foot had caught in a gopher hole, and over he went,turning almost a complete somersault.
Jack gave a shout of horror as he saw the catastrophe. He feared Budhad been killed, but the lithe bronco buster was up in a second,stumbling toward his fallen horse.
But the rope did not prove equal to the sudden strain put upon it bythe collapse of the calico. The instant the pony had fallen, of courseits full weight had come on the rawhide, instead of there being, as Budhad planned, a gradual strangling down of the runaway. It had been,in effect, a tug of war between the flying Petticoats and the suddenlychecked calico.
Crack!
The rope twanged taut as a stretched fiddle string and parted with asnap just as Bud reached back into the hip of his leathern chaperarosfor his Colt.
He had determined to shoot the runaway and risk disabling Ralph, ratherthan have the pony take the twenty-foot plunge over the brim of thecanal. But at the moment his finger pressed the trigger there came ashout from Jack, who was now only a few paces behind Petticoats. Theboy's hastily thrown lariat had missed altogether.
Before their horrified eyes, the runaway buck-skin and her rider thenext instant plunged in one confused heap over the bank of the canaland vanished from sight.
Jack was within a breath of following them over the brink, but in thenick of time he wheeled the carefully trained Firewater round on hishaunches and averted a second calamity.
Controlling his half-maddened steed, the boy pressed to the edge ofthe canal. The bank was new and smooth, and as steep as the roof ofa house. Ralph and his pony had rolled over and over down this placein one inextricable heap. But by the time Jack reached the edge of thesteep bank, Ralph had kicked free of the big, clumsy Mexican stirrupsand was struggling in the water.
The flood was rushing along in a yellow, turbid swirl. There had been afreshet in the mountains a few days before, and to relieve the pressureon the land company's dam up there, the spillways had been opened totheir capacity. The canal was carrying the great overflow. It torealong between the high, steep banks like a mill race.
"The flood gates!" came a frenzied shout from Bud. He pointed westward.
In a flash Jack realized that the flood gates below must be open, andat the instant of this realization came another thought.
If he did not act and act quickly, Ralph would be carried through thegates to probably certain death.
"Ralph! Ralph!" he shouted, as he gazed down at the brave struggle hischum was making to reach the bank; but the current swept the Easternboy away from it every time. His pony had gained the bank, and waspawing pitifully at the steep, sandy slope.
It did not need more than a glance to see that Ralph's strength wasgiving out. He turned up a white, despairing face to Jack, by whoseside there now stood Bud Wilson.
"Quick, Jack! Chuck him the rope!" shouted Bud in a tense voice.
Inwardly angry at himself for not having thought of this before,Jack sent his rawhide snaking down the bank. Ralph, his face whiteand strained above the tearing yellow current, reached out in adesperate effort to clutch the rawhide. Even as his fingers gripped it,however, the current proved too much for him. He was swept away on itswhite-flecked surface like a bit of drift.
"Ride, boy, ride! We've got to beat him to the sluice and close thegates! It's his only chance!"
It was Bud's voice once more.
Somehow, Jack found himself in the saddle, with Firewater racingunder him as that brave little bay had never raced before. Closealongside came Bud, rowelling his bleeding-kneed calico cruelly tokeep alongside. Far behind came shouts and yells from the crowd. Thebuckskin, the cause of all the trouble, managed to clamber to the edgeof the stream, where the water was slightly shallower, and was draggedout by ropes. While the race for life swept onward, she stood drippingand shivering on the summit of the bank.
From his flying pony Jack caught occasional glimpses of Ralph in thestream below. The boy was a good swimmer, and now that he was beingcarried along with the current, instead of fighting it, he was able tokeep his head above water most of the time.
"Stick it out, Ralph, old boy!" yelled Jack, as he dashed past thehalf-drowned lad whom the rapid current was carrying almost as swiftlyas the over-run ponies could gallop.
"We'll be in time!" exclaimed Jack, through his clinched teeth. Rightahead of him he saw some grim, gallows-like looking timbers reared upagainst the sky line, which he knew must mark the sluice.
Hardly had the thought flashed through his mind, when Firewater seemedto glide from beneath him. An instant later Jack found himself rollingover and over on the level plain.
The same accident as had befallen Bud had happened to him. A gopherhole--one of those pests of desert riders--had tripped Firewater andsent his rider sprawling headlong.
"Hurt?"
Bud Wilson, on the calico, drew up alongside Jack, who had struggled tohis feet and was looking about in a dazed sort of way.
"No, I'll be all right in a second. But Firewater!"
The bay had risen to his feet, but stood, sweating and trembling, withhis head down almost between his knees. He could not have expressed"dead beat" better if he had said it in so many words.
"Blown up!" exclaimed Bud disgustedly.
"What shall we do?" choked out Jack.
"Here, quick! Up behind me!"
Bud reached down a hand, kicked a foot out of his left stirrup, and ina second Jack was swung up behind him and they were off.
"I hope to goodness we strike no more gopher holes," thought the boy,as they raced along, scarcely more slowly than when the plucky littlecalico had only a single burden to carry. Never had the brave littlebeast been used more unmercifully. Bud Wilson plied his heavy quirton the pony's flanks as if he meant to lay the flesh open. To everylash of the rawhide the calico responded bravely, leaping forwardcon
vulsively.
"We'll beat him to it!" cried Jack triumphantly, as both riders fairlyfell off the spent calico's back at the sluice gates.
"Yep, maybe; but we've got to get 'em closed first!" was Bud's laconicresponse.
Paying no further attention to the calico--which was too spent, anyhow,to attempt to get away--the two, the man and the boy, ran at top speedacross the narrow wooden runway which led to the big wheels by whichthe gateways of the sluice were raised and lowered.
"If Ralph can only hold out!" gasped Jack, who, far up the stream hadespied a small black object coming rapidly toward him, which he knewmust be the head of his chum. Ralph was swimming easily, taking carenot to wind himself, and looking out for any opportunity which mightpresent itself to reach the bank. No sooner did he attempt to cross thecurrent, however, than the water broke over him as if he had been abroached-to canoe. He confined his efforts, therefore, to keeping hishead above water. Of the deadly peril that lay ahead of him he had, ofcourse, no knowledge.
"Hurry, Bud!" cried Jack, in an agony of fear that they would be toolate.
"All right now, take it easy, Jack. No use hurrying over this job,"replied Bud easily, though his drawn face and the sweat on his foreheadshowed the agitation under which he was laboring.
"Consarn this thing! How's it work!" he muttered angrily, fiddling withthe machinery, which was complicated and fitted with elaborate gearsand levers to enable the terrific pressure of the water to be handledmore easily.
Beneath their feet the stream--a mad torrent above--developed into ascreaming, furious flood at the sluiceway. It shot through the narrowconfines at tremendous velocity, shaking and tearing at the masonrybuttresses as if it would rip them away.
To Jack's excited imagination, it seemed as if the swollen canal wasinstinct with life and malevolence, and determined to have human lifeor property in revenge for its confinement.
Suddenly the boy's eyes fell on something he had not noticed before.Beyond the floodgate the engineers of the irrigation canal, findingthat the confinement of the water at the sluiceway tended to make thecurrent too savage for mere sandy walls to hold it, had constructeda tunnel. This expedient had been resorted to only after numerousexperimental cement retaining walls had been swept away.
Just beyond the buttresses on the other side of the sluice, theentrance of the tunnel yawned blackly. Like a great mouth it swallowedthe raging flood as it swept through the sluice.
"Bud! Bud! Look!" cried Jack, pointing.
"Great jumping side-winders! I forgot the tunnel!" groaned Bud, hisusually emotionless face working in his agitation. He had been handlingthe sluice desperately, but without result.
"We _must_ close the gates within a second, or it will be too late!"shouted Jack, above the roar of the water. Ralph's despairing face wasvery close now.
"My poor kid, we can't!" wailed Bud.
"Why not?"
"The double-doggoned, dash beblinkered fool as looks after 'em haspadlocked 'em, and we can't git 'em closed without a key!"
There was not a second to think.
Even as the discovery that it would be impossible to close the gateswas made, Ralph's white face flashed into view almost beneath them.
Bud made a quick snatch at Jack's lariat, which the boy still retained,and snaked it down over the racing water.
"Missed!" he groaned, as Ralph's upturned face was hurried by.
At the same instant there came a splash that the cow puncher heard evenabove the roar of the water as it tore through its confines.
Bud glanced quickly round.
Where Jack Merrill had stood a moment before were a pair of shoes, theboy's coat and his shirt.
But Jack had gone--he had jumped to Ralph's rescue. As Bud, with asharp exclamation of dismay, switched sharply round, he was just intime to see the forms of the two boys swallowed in the darkness of theirrigation tunnel.
The Border Boys on the Trail Page 3