Chapter XXVI: A Midnight Raid

THE Spaniards sharing the sick man's tent willingly complied with Charley's request and moved their belongings to the other tents in which there was plenty of room for them. With Walter's assistance the lad cleaned the tent out thoroughly and tied back the flaps at both ends to permit the free circulation of air. Rama was made to go to bed on a second cot and given a dose of the same medicine given the other. This done, Charley called the balance of the graders and ground men together and gave them a large bottle of carbolic acid and a box of salve, instructing them how to use both. It was now getting dark, and after a hasty supper the boys with their two Spaniards repaired to the guard line. Before night, however, Walter had climbed a small tree and taken a survey of the country. Much to his disappointment, he had seen smoke rising from the convicts' old camping place, showing that the gunmen had returned to their old haunts.

"I wonder how they manage to find our camp so easy at night," the lad remarked, as he and his chum met on their rounds. "When McCarty and I were out hunting that time we could not see this camp from theirs, and after we camped in the thicket we could not see their camp, although we were not over half a mile away. The white mist blotted out everything."

"That digging light way up on the machine's boom guides them," Charley answered. "The mist is densest close to the ground. The further up one goes the thinner it gets; consequently they can see that light even when they can't see our campfire."

"Simple enough, after all," Walter commented. "It's the simple things that puzzle one the most sometimes."

"Which reminds me of what Mr. Bruce hinted," Charley said, "that the solution of our mystery was in plain sight all the time, but hanged if I haven't puzzled over it till I made my head swim and can't make it out."

"Same here," Walter said. "I hope he is right and can make an end to this trouble, but I doubt it."

"Well, we will know in a few days. He promised to be out again within a week."

The lads turned back on their patrol and the conversation ceased.

The hours slipped slowly away while the four guards kept up their slow, weary, monotonous pacing back and forth. Three times Charley slipped in and administered doses of quinine. On the last trip he passed by the cook tent and, striking a match, glanced at the clock inside.

"It's just midnight," he said as he rejoined his chum. "That seems to be the favorite time for their devilment. I suppose we can look for trouble any minute now." He had hardly finished when there came the sharp crack of rifles from about the machine. "Good," Charley exclaimed, "they haven't all got silent guns this time. Those reports will give our men an idea where to shoot."

"Hadn't we better go out there?" Walter asked.

"No, we may have our hands full here," his chum replied. "Besides, the engineer will whistle if he wants us. Gee, look at that!"

The swinging platform of the machine was turning around and around at great speed and from it burst forth little jets of flame as the machine men answered the enemy's fire.

"Good boy, McCarty," Walter exclaimed. "I guess they will have a job hitting any of your men." He ducked as a bullet whizzed close by him.

"Watch out!" Charley cried, "they have got the camp surrounded, too."

"Shoot wherever you see a flash, then step to one side so they won't locate your position."

The Captain, Chris and the two engineers came running from the camp half dressed with their guns in their hands. By the time they reached the line, the rifles of both defenders and attackers were crackling merrily and the bullets were whining back and forth. For half an hour the firing continued on both sides, then the attacking party slowly withdrew, firing as they retired. The attempt on the machine had quickly been silenced, and McCarty was digging again as though nothing had happened. Lanterns were lit and the defenders took stock of the damage done. Captain Westfield had a scratch on the leg where a bullet had grazed, one of the Spaniards had lost a finger tip, and a cow staked out within the line had been killed. Whether the enemy had suffered from their fire they could not tell.

"I doubt if they were hurt much," Charley observed. "I think they did most of their fighting from behind trees. We want to take a lesson from them on that. To-morrow we will have to fix up some kind of protection to get behind when the fun begins. I do not expect we will get off as lucky next time as we did this. I believe they were trying to scare us this time more than anything else."

Satisfied that the trouble was over for the night, the Captain and his companions returned to bed while the lads resumed their weary round of sentinel duty. Nothing more occurred to disturb them, and they were heartily glad when day at last came. As soon as it grew light enough to see well, the two lads went out and examined the place from which their enemies had fired. They found nothing, however, but a few drops of blood on the grass beside a tree. "Some one got barked a little here," Charley observed. "It wasn't anything serious, however, or there would be more blood around."

The boys had just finished breakfast when one of the Spaniards came in from the machine.

"Boss, McCarty want you to come out to the machine," he said to Charley.

"I wonder what the trouble is now," said the boy wearily, as he arose and put on his hat. "Want to walk out with me, Walt?"

"Sure," his chum assented.

"What's the matter?" Charley asked of the white-faced Spaniard who accompanied them back.

The Spaniard hastily crossed himself. "God knows," he said with a shudder. "It's blood that we wash in and blood that we drink. May the Blessed Virgin forgive us."

As they were near the machine, the lads did not question him further, but hastened on to where McCarty was standing a little ways beyond the road.

"What's the matter?" Charley asked the engineer.

"You can see for yourself," was the reply. "Look at that little brook over there where we have been getting our water. Last night it was just ordinary sweet, pure, cold water, but just look at it now."

The two lads stepped over to the tiny brook McCarty pointed out. It was only a few feet wide and three or four inches in depth, except where the machine men had dug a hole a couple of feet deep to make possible the dipping up of a few bucketfuls at a time. The boy's eyes opened wide with wonder and surprise, for the waters of the little rill were red like blood.

"Queer, isn't it?" said McCarty. "Hanged if I can account for it."

"I have seen brooks of that color where the water flowed over red bay tree roots," Walter volunteered.

"That color does not come from bay roots," objected the other. "You want to remember that it was all right and colorless yesterday. We got a fresh pail of water about two hours ago. Of course we did not notice the color then because it was dark, but one of the men went to get a drink a while ago and I thought he would throw a fit when he saw the color of the stuff he had been drinking. Bossie washed his face and hands in the brook a couple of hours ago and just look at him now." The lads glanced at the Spaniard, whose frightened face was a bright red. "They want to quit," McCarty continued in a low voice. "This, coming after all the other mystery, has scared them out of their wits. Unless you can hit upon some reasonable explanation of this thing and do it quick, I am afraid the whole gang will quit. They have been crossing themselves and muttering prayers to the Virgin for the last hour."

A glance at the three frightened Spaniards convinced the two lads that McCarty was not exaggerating the seriousness of the situation.

"Keep them here until I come back," Charley told him softly. "Come on, Walt, I am going to follow that rill up to its source."

They had not far to go. A couple of hundred yards from the machine they found the rill's source among a clump of willows. Here a little spring bubbled up from the ground. Near its mouth, fastened tightly to a stake, was an object that caused the boy to utter exclamations of surprise and relief. It was a muslin bag capable of holding eight or ten pounds and it was stained a bright red. It had been cunningly placed in a narrow part of the rill and the dirt banked up on both sides so that all the water from the spring would have to pass through or over it.

"Don't touch it," Charley said. "Go bring the machine men here. I want to make this an object lesson to them."

While Walter was gone on this errand, the lad gathered up several pasteboard packages that lay scattered around on the ground. He noted with satisfaction that the directions on them were printed in Spanish as well as English.

In a few minutes Walter was back with the wondering Spaniards. Relief began to replace the look of fright on their faces as Charley silently pointed out to them the red stained bag and, untying it from the stake, undid the string closing its mouth and shook out on the ground a mass of water-soaked red powder. He picked up three of the packages he had collected and gave one to each of the Spaniards. "Read," he said shortly. The Spaniards burst out laughing as they grasped the cause of the thing that had so frightened them.

"Our enemies want to stop us from building this road," Charley said in Spanish. "They are fools. They think by firing off their guns in the air at night, starting fires in the grass, and coloring water red with dyes, that they can frighten away the brave, noble sons of Spain. Surely they are fools."

"They are fools," agreed Bossie, now completely recovered from his fright. "They might frighten children, but Spaniards never. No other race is as brave and fearless as the sons of Spain."