The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz | Page 8

tropical woodland--a stillness broken only by the occasional wild
scream of the ape, or the hoarse breathing of the boy as he fought to
free himself from that horrible grasp.
The struggle must have lasted for two or three minutes--to Billie it
seemed hours--when by a sudden wrench the lad managed to free his
left arm sufficiently to get the beast by the throat. For an instant it
loosed its hold on his right arm and that act decided the battle.
Finding his right arm free, Billie seized his revolver and without
drawing it from the holster pulled the trigger.
At the sound of the shot, the ape uttered a plaintive cry, relaxed its hold
upon the lad and fell upon its knees on the ground with its hands raised
in supplication as previously.
"I ought to shoot you," declared the lad between his gasps for breath as
he drew the weapon from its holster and pointed it at the animal, "but I
won't. I'll take you with me and maybe I can sell you for enough to pay
me for the scare you've given me. Now, march!"

He pointed with his finger down the track, but the beast would not stir.
"Don't you intend to do what I tell you?"
The animal perked up his head and kept his eye upon the revolver.
"Well," exclaimed Billie as he drew a long breath, "this is the limit. I
can't make you mind and I won't hurt you. I guess the only thing I can
do is to go and leave you."
Suiting the action to the word, Billie turned and started down the track,
his revolver still in his hand.
He had not gone more than a dozen steps, before he heard the soft
pat-pat behind him, and on looking back could see nothing but the
waving grass to indicate the whereabouts of his erstwhile assailant.
"So I am to be followed, am I? Well, all right." Then, as an afterthought:
"I wonder how I can catch him when I want him. I wonder if this will
do," and he raised his weapon and pointed it toward the moving grass.
With the same plaintive cry which Billie had come to recognize as one
of fear, the animal ran toward him and sank to his knees.
Billie smiled.
"It's all right, old chap. As long as I know how to handle you, why you
can follow me right back to the train."
Again he started down the track at a brisk walk, it having just occurred
to him that there might be something doing at the other end of his
journey.
Twenty minutes later he reached the station at Pitahaya where he had
expected to find Adrian and the three Mexicans awaiting him, but, as
we know, they had gone on to the scene of the wreck. Not realizing just
what had happened, but always on the alert for the unexpected, Billie,
therefore, began an inspection of the station.

It did not take him long to discover that Pitahaya was little more than a
siding with a one-room building, which was used as a freight house and
a waiting room. It did not even boast of a station master.
"There must be some reason for having a building here," he mused.
"There must be some sort of a settlement around somewhere. But
what's that to me? I might as well be jogging along towards Pachuca."
Then he bethought him of the ape, which he had no mind to lose after
his exciting experience. But the animal was nowhere to be seen.
"I wonder if I could raise him with a shot," soliloquized Billie.
He raised his weapon, which he still carried in his hand, and fired
aimlessly, while he turned his eyes in various directions, but there was
nothing to be seen.
"Oh, well," he thought, "what's the difference? He'd just be a nuisance
anyway. I might as well be trudging along."
He jumped off the station platform and proceeded down the track,
filling the magazine to his automatic as he went. Then having finished
the task, he returned it to his holster and once more began counting the
ties.
"One, two, three, four, five, six----"
Bing! And a stone whistled by his head.
Billie turned, and as he did so a second stone from the same source
struck him on the temple, and he fell to the ground.
A second later the ape sprang from a palm beside the station and ran
toward him, stopping every few feet to see if the lad would rise.
When within a few feet of the prostrate lad the animal made a leap and
landed upon his body. In another instant it had gained possession of
Billie's weapon, which it examined curiously for a moment, ere