CHAPTER XVIII

THE BLACK CAVE

"You fellows know this country better than I do," remarked Pocus Pete as he guided his pinto pony out among the hills that led away from the Mexican town where they had just escaped from the gambling den. "I'll have to depend on you to get me out of here."

"Don't worry about that," drawled Lazy Ike whose speech was, at times, as slow as his actions. "We'll stick by you to the last."

"Though, for the matter of that," went on the strange cowboy, "those fellows who were juggling the pasteboards didn't get any more than was coming to 'em."

"You're darn right!" chimed in Slim Jim. "Say, pard, I gotta hand it to you for shufflin' the cards! How'd you work it?"

"Just a trick," and Pocus Pete smiled. "But say, do you fellows know where you are and where we're goin'?"

"You well said it!" exclaimed Lazy Ike, flapping his pony with the reins. "We know this country all right, an' to our sorrow. I wish we'd never crossed the Rio Grande."

"Same here," came sorrowfully from his pal.

"What's wrong with it?" asked Pocus Pete. "Too much oil?"

"Too much oil for a cattleman," answered Slim Jim. "An' there's other things, too."

"What other things?" asked the pinto-riding cowboy curiously. He acted as though he had long been on the trail of something or somebody and that now he was nearing the end of his quest. "What other things?"

"You tell him, Slim," urged Lazy Ike. "We got to stick together now, since that shootin' fracas, so he might as well know what's what."

"Yes," remarked Pocus Pete, "if the cops get after us we're all in the same boat, I reckon, though you didn't shoot anybody, Jim."

"Not this time. But I gotta couple of notches on my gun handle," boasted the cowboy. "Not but what the fellows who stopped my bullets didn't get what they deserved," he added. "I'm no promisc'us shooter. It was them or me, an' I'd ruther it'd be them. So the cops, as you call 'em, are after me, too--only they haven't got onto my curves yet back there in Rolamotaza."

"Cops," drawled Lazy Ike meditatively. "I ain't heard that word in a long spell. You must 'a' been East recent, Pocus Pete."

"I'm from the East, originally," admitted the cowboy on the pinto. "Some of the words stick to me yet. I reckon they ain't got no regular police out here, have they?"

"These Greasers? Naw!" exclaimed Slim Jim as he shoved a big wad of tobacco into his mouth. "Con-stab-u-lary--that's what they call 'em in Mex. Dirty, greasy Greasers--that's all!"

"But they shoot without stoppin' to ask why or wherefor," warned Lazy Ike. "So we'd best put a few miles between them an' us afore Don Juan Castro starts the ball game."

"Don Juan Castro?" exclaimed Pocus Pete, and there was so much excitement in his voice that his two companions looked at him in surprise and Jim asked:

"You know him?"

"I've heard of him," was the answer. "He's a big cattle man, isn't he?"

"Naw! Oil," and Jim got rid of some of his tobacco juice. "He owns a lot of oil wells around here an' he's always tryin' to git more. There's some wells here owned by a party out your way--in the East, I mean--N' York, I heard. Well, this Don Castro and his gang are after them wells."

"They tried to buy 'em," added Ike. "An' when they couldn't do that, well, some queer things begun happenin'."

"That's what I was goin' to tell you about," put in Slim. "This country ain't no good for cattle--it's all oil, an it ain't healthy for them as dabbles in oil, 'less they're in right with Don Castro."

"What happens?" asked Pocus Pete.

"They passes out--sudden like," answered Slim and he made a motion as if sticking a knife into someone. "An' that ain't the worse of it, neither," he went on.

"No?" questioned Pocus Pete.

"No, sir! There's signs that them as passes out sudden has been done away with by a secret society. There was certain signs left near each dead man, an' three was killed lately to my certain knowledge."

"That's right," chimed in Lazy Ike. "Three!"

"What was the mysterious sign?" asked Pocus Pete.

"It was a sign of a double dagger drawed on a card found near the dead men," resumed Slim. "An' in one of the bodies, a regular double dagger was found--a knife with a big blade on one end an' a small blade on the other. Looked like if they didn't get you goin' they would comin' or visse versy as they used to say when I went to school."

"So they found the double dagger in one of the victims, did they?" asked Pocus Pete.

"It was left stickin' in one of the stiffs, if that's what you mean," chuckled Lazy Ike.

"Where it is? Who has it? I mean where is that double dagger now?" and Pocus Pete showed so much excitement that both his new friends looked at him in wonder. Then Slim added:

"It didn't stay in him long. Feller named Steele, it was. An' he got steel--cold steel--poor slob! This is how it come about. Ike an' me we moseyed down here lookin' for work, an' when we found it weren't no cattle country we sort of stuck around, pickin' up odd jobs. It wasn't so bad at first, though we didn't have no great hankerin' for oil. An' then the queer killin's begun.

"But about this double dagger you seems to be interested in. One mornin' a young feller we happened to know--he was a college boy who'd run away an' he got a job down here. He used to ride off by himself a lot, alone. One mornin' he come racin' back to town, his pony all a lather of foam, sayin' he'd seed a dead man out in the gully, an' he had a double dagger stuck in his heart. That's how it was knowed the killin's was done with that kind of a knife."

"So they found the double dagger, did they?" asked Pocus Pete.

"Well, Jimmie Dale--that was this college lad's name, saw the knife stickin' in poor Steele," went on Slim. "But when some of us went out there with a few of what passes for police around here, the knife was gone."

"Who took it?"

"Nobody could tell. Likely it was some of them that drove the double dagger into Steele's heart. They must 'a' knifed him and then got a scare that sent 'em off on the run 'fore they had time to pull the knife out. Then they come back an' got it."

"Looks as if they cared a lot for it," commented Pocus Pete.

"Reckon so," came from Ike. "Well, now you know what sort of country you've drifted to, Pete, an' I hope you like it."

"I've been in worse places," was the cool answer. "If there is food and water to be had up in these hills I reckon we can hold out."

"Oh, there won't be no trouble about that," declared Slim. "We know a few places to hide."

"The black cave, for one," suggested his pal.

"That's right. We'd better head for that."

"As for grub," went on Ike, "there are a lot of Mexican farmers up in these hills, an' they'll sell us skinny chickens an' them fried beans they call frijoles or tortillas or somethin' like that. An' there's plenty of springs, so we'll make out all right."

"Then we'll camp for a while," suggested Pocus Pete. "As it's my fault, in a way, that you were forced to flee--vamoose you know--" He seemed to have, for the moment, swung out of the cowboy slang. "As it was my doin's that you had to come here you'll let me buy the grub."

"Don't know's we'll have much objection to that," said Slim. "We're about broke."

"That's right," nodded Ike. "But how do you figger it's your fault, Pocus Pete, that we're here because of you?"

"Well, if I hadn't butted in on that card game when I saw Slim being double-crossed----"

"Forgit it!" broke in the cowboy gambler. "I was jest gittin' wise to their game myself, an' I'd likely have started somethin' if you hadn't. No, we're all in the same boat, an' we'll stick together."

The trio rode on. The ponies were fleet, and soon took them beyond pursuit, which, as a matter of fact, did not last long. Perhaps the Mexicans did not relish the quick shooting of the cowboys.

They rode up among the hills and stopped at a farm, run by a peon and his wife, where Pocus Pete footed the bill for food--it was not a costly meal, a dollar buying enough for all three.

That night they camped in the open, rolled in blankets near a fire, and the next morning traveled on, for Ike and Slim said the black cave, a natural cavern in the hills, would be reached about noon.

The sun was not yet at the zenith when Lazy Ike, pointing ahead on the trail, drawled:

"There she is!"

"What?" asked Pocus Pete.

"The black cave."

The newly arrived cowboy glanced to a dark opening in the side of the hill, and, as he looked, he said in a low voice:

"Somebody's ahead of us."

"What do you mean?" asked Slim.

"I mean there are some fellows in the black cave. What had we better do, boys? This is your game."

Lazy Ike and Slim Jim peered from beneath their sombreros at some horsemen coming out of the cavern.