“Oh, I’m a smart fellow, anyhow,” chuckled Coyote Pete, “come on. One cigar for every head I crack. That’s the way they do it at the county fair with the Jolly Nigger Dodger, and I don’t know as you greasers have anything on him.”
“Rush up and bring them down out of that!” screamed Ramon furiously. But the sharp lesson they had just had seemed to hold the Mexicans in check. Evidently the Gringoes above were not to be trifled with. Ramon strode up and down the room stamping and raging and biting his nails. Altogether he was in a fit of black Latin rage which is not so very different from the tantrums we occasionally find in our own nurseries.
“Why not come up yourself, Ramon?” was Coyote’s next thrust. “If your head is burning with such blazing thoughts it must need ventilating.”
But the Mexican, wisely enough perhaps, did not reply. Instead, he called down the men from the ladder, seeing, in spite of his rage, that it was useless to waste his followers in that fashion.
“We’d better bottle up the trap door now,” said Pete, as the voices below became more inaudible. “Get that old furniture, boys, and we’ll make things snug.”
“Here’s an old table top that might fit over the hole,” said Jack, bringing the article in question, “it’ll just fit too, and it’s solid mahogany.”
“Just the thing, boy. Now quickly bring all the stuff you can to pile on it.”
“Say, there’s a pile of big stones over here where the chimney goes through,” reported Ralph presently, “how would those do for weights?”
“Fine. Bring them right along. Your Uncle Dudley will pile them.”
One would have said from the cow-puncher’s boisterous spirits that he was in perfect security instead of a situation the danger of which he, perhaps, more fully realized than any of his companions, comparatively inexperienced as they were.
One by one the lads carried the big stones over and they were piled on the table top.
“That will do,” said Coyote at length, “they’ll never get that up unless they use dynamite.”
“What do you suppose they’ll do now?” wondered Jack as, the work over, they sat down about the newly covered hole.
“Try rushing that back door, most likely. Suppose you take a peek out of the window. It gives a view of the steps and it’s too small for the varmint ter git through.”