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The Border Boys on the Trail
The Border Boys on the Trail
CHAPTER I.
ON THE BORDER
"Maguez! Maguez!"
The trainmen began hoarsely shouting the curious-sounding name of the small frontier town near the Mexican border, in the southwest part of New Mexico. Slowly the long dust-covered Southern Pacific express rolled imposingly into "Mag-gay," very slowly, in fact, as if it did not wish to tarry in that desolate, sun-bitten portion of the continent.
As the brakes began to grind down, one of two boys of about seventeen, who had been lounging on the shady side of a forward sleeper, awoke from a semi-doze with a start.
"Hullo! somebody wants Maggie!" exclaimed Ralph Stetson, as he gazed out of the open window. He saw nothing more novel before his eyes, however, than the same monotonous stretch of yellow, sandy wastes, sprinkled with sage brush and dotted by a few wandering cattle, which the train had been traversing for hours.
"You'll have to get used to New Mexican pronunciation of Mexican names, Ralph," laughed his companion, as he also opened his eyes and began looking about him in the half-startled manner peculiar to those abruptly awakened from "forty winks." "'Maggie', as you call it, is our station."
"Station!" echoed the other. "Where is it?"
He stuck his head out of the window as the train gradually decreased speed, but his eyes encountered nothing more suggestive of a town than a stock car on a lonely side track, into which some cowboys, with wild yells and much spurring of their wiry little steeds, were herding a few beef cattle.
"That freight car must be in front of the town," muttered the boy, pulling in his head.
"Over this side, you tenderfoot!" laughed Jack Merrill, pointing out of the left-hand window. "Haven't you got used to Western towns yet?"
"One-sided towns, you mean, I guess," said Ralph, rising and looking out in the opposite direction. "Why in the name of the State of New Mexico do they build all the towns out here at one side of the tracks?"