out
beyond the shadow of the solitary mesa . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

As it flared up, all three recoiled with expressions of dismay. At
their very feet was a deep chasm.

A tempest of lead rattled about the engine. Almost before they
realized it, they had swung around the curve.

The Border Boys Across the Frontier.

CHAPTER I.

THE TRAIL OF THE HAUNTED MESA.

"Can you make out any sign of the mesa yet, Pete?"

The speaker, a sun-bronzed lad of about seventeen, mounted on a bright
bay pony with a white-starred forehead, drew rein as he spoke. Shoving
back his sombrero, he shielded his eyes from the shimmering desert
glare with one hand and gazed intently off into the southwest.

"Nope; nary a speck, so fur. Queer, too; we ought to be seein' it by
now."

Coyote Pete, as angular, rangy and sinewy as ever, gazed as intently in
the same direction as the lad, Jack Merrill, himself. The pause
allowed the remainder of the party to ride up. There was Ralph
Stetson, a good deal browner and sturdier-looking than when we
encountered him last in "The Border Boys on the Trail"; Walt Phelps,
the ranch boy, whose blazing hair outrivaled the glowing sun; and the
bony, grotesque form of Professor Wintergreen, preceptor of Latin and
the kindred tongues at Stonefell College, and amateur archaeologist.
Lest they might feel slighted, let us introduce also, One Spot, Two
Spot and Three Spot, the pack burros.

"I always had an idea that the Haunted Mesa formed quite a prominent
object in the landscape," put in Professor Wintergreen, referring to a
small leather-bound book, which he had just taken from one of his
saddle-bags.

"And I always had an idea," laughed Ralph Stetson, "that a landscape
meant something with brooks and green trees and cows and--and things,
in it."

The young son of "King Pin" Stetson, the Eastern Railroad King, looked
about him at the gray desert, above which the sun blazed mercilessly
down with all the intensity of a burning glass. Here and there were
isolated clumps of rank-odored mesquite, the dreariest looking
gray-green bush imaginable. The scanty specimens of this variety of
the vegetable life of the desert were interspersed here and there by
groups of scraggly, prickly cacti. Across such country as this, the
party had been making its way for the past day and a half,--ever since,
in fact, they had left behind them the foothills of the Hachetas,
where, as we know, was located the