"Sure I did," was the indignant reply, as the driver knelt in the dust and began examining the tire carefully. "But you can't fix a puncture in a jiffy."

"This one is a-goin' ter be fixed in a jiffy," rejoined Buck ominously, "or there'll be a punctured chaffer 'round here."

As he spoke, the proprietor of the Wild West Show moved his great bulk in the forward seat, and produced a heavy-calibred revolver, that glistened in the starlight.

"Get busy!" he ordered.

"Y-y-y-y-yes, sir," stuttered the chauffeur, who had been hired in San Antonio, before the show crossed the border, and found itself in the country of the insurrectos.

"Maybe I can give him a hand--I know something about cars," volunteered Ralph.

"Then help him out, will yer son?" puffed the red-faced Buck Bradley.

"It's my private opinion," he went on, in a voice intended to be confidential, but which was merely a subdued bellow, "that that chaffer of mine couldn't chaff a chafing dish."

Ralph took one of the oil headlights out of its socket, and, taking it to the back of the car, found the chauffeur scratching his head over the tire.

"What's the trouble?" asked Ralph.

"Why, you see, sir," stammered the chauffeur, "I don't just exactly know. I think it's a puncture, but----"

"Say, aren't you supposed to be a chauffeur?" inquired Ralph disgustedly.

"Waal, I run a taxicab onct," was the reply, in a low tone, however, "but that's all the chauffering I ever done. You see, I went broke in San Antone, and----"

"All right; all right," snapped Ralph impatiently. "Say, you people, you'd better get out of the car, while I tinker this up."

"Is it a bad bust-up?" puffed Buck Bradley, clambering out. "I only bought ther car a week ago, and I've spent more time under it than in it, ever since."

"It's not very bad--just a little blow-out," announced Ralph, who had been examining the wheel. "Got a jack and an emergency kit?"

"Sure!" snorted Buck Bradley. "Here, you excuse for a chaffer, git ther hospital outfit, and hurry up."

"Please, sir, I--I forgot the emergency kit," stuttered the new chauffeur.

"You forgot! Great Moses!" howled Buck. "Have you got the jack, then?"

"Yes, sir."

"Get it, please," said Ralph, pulling off one of his gloves. The boy rapidly slashed it with his pocket-knife, while the others watched him interestedly. In the meantime, the chauffeur had tremblingly "jacked up" the car.

Binding his handkerchief about the puncture, and placing the leather from his glove about that, Ralph rapidly wound some strips of raw-hide from Pete's pockets about the bandage. This done he proceeded to blow up the tire. To his great joy the extemporized "plug" held. The tire swelled and grew hard.

"It won't last long, but it may hold long enough for us," said Ralph, as he let the car down again and handed the jack to the "chaffer."

As the man took and replaced it at the back of the car, Buck Bradley regarded him with extreme disfavor. Then he turned to Ralph.

"Say, sonny," he said, "did you say you could run a car?"

"Yes."

"This one?"

"I think so."

Bradley turned to his "chaffer."

"Here, you!" he bellowed, "it's about two miles into town. Hoof it in thar an' when yer git ter camp tell Sam Stow to run ther show ter-night. I'm off on important business, tell him."

As the "chaffer" shuffled off, Buck Bradley began to hum:

"I knew at dawn, when de rooster crowed, Dere wuz gwine ter be trouble on de Gran' Trunk Ro-ad!"

"It's a good thing you got that done in jig-time, young feller," spoke Buck, as the job and his song were finished, and they scrambled back into the car, "fer here they come."

He pointed back up the starlit road.

Not more than a few hundred yards off, several mounted figures came into view. At the same moment that the occupants of the car sighted them, the pursuing insurrectos made out the automobile.

Yelling at the top of their voices, they swept down upon it.

"Let 'er out, and don't bother ter hit nuthin' but ther high places,"

Buck admonished Ralph, who now held the wheel.

CHAPTER XX.

AT THE ESMERALDA MINE.

"If only I was certain that my boy and his friends were safe, Geisler, I wouldn't feel so much anxiety."

Mr. Merrill, an anxious look on his face, paced up and down the floor of the office of the Esmeralda Mine. It was the morning of the day following the dash for safety in Buck Bradley's car, and the mine owner and his superintendent had been in anxious consultation since breakfast. In truth, they had enough to worry them. In the specie room of the mine was stored more than $20,000 worth of dust, the product of the big stamp mill.

From what they had been able to ascertain, the insurrectos were unusually active in the neighborhood. Open warning had been sent to the American mine owners, including Mr. Merrill, to be prepared to yield up generously and freely, or have their property destroyed. In addition to this worry, the mine owner and his superintendent, together with the three young "level bosses," had been practically cut off from communication with the outside world for the past twenty-four hours.

A branch of the Chihuahua Northern tapped the mine, but no train had puffed its way up the steep grade for more than three days, and it was useless to try to use the wires, as they had been put out of commission almost at the beginning of the trouble in the province.

"If I had ever dreamed the trouble would a.s.sume such serious proportions, the last thing I would have done would have been to allow the professor or his young charges to journey to the Haunted Mesa,"

continued the mine owner.

Geisler, a rotund German, with a wealth of flaxen hair and moustache, puffed at his china-bowled pipe before replying.

"Dese Megxicans is der teufel ven dey get started, ain'd idt?" he remarked. "For a veek, now, dere has not been a tap of vork done py der mine, und nodt a sign uv der rabblescallions uv loafers vot vos employed deere."

"That is a lesson to me in employing Mexican labor," declared Mr.

Merrill emphatically. "If it isn't a saint's day carousal, it's a revolution, and if it isn't a revolution, it's a bad attack of aversion to work. I tell you, Geisler, the folks who are sympathizing with these insurrectos don't know the people or the country."