THE FUNNEL
It was not until the last of the cattle had disappeared through the
gap between the hollows, and the chuck wagon likewise had trundled
out of sight, that the girls and their party left the encampment
which had been the scene of the night's excitement.
It was not impossible--and even Rhoda mentioned it--that they would
none of them ever experience again so strenuous an eight hours as
that since the beginning of the stampede.
The disaster was one that would be long remembered by the Rose
Ranch cowpunchers, as well as by the ranch owner himself. A more
disastrous stampede had seldom been known in that vicinity.
Already the coyotes were appearing--slip-footed and sneaking! They
began to gorge on the more distant carcasses of the dead cattle
before the chuck wagon was out of sight. And around and around
overhead the buzzards circled, dropping at last to the ground and
pecking at the stiffened carcasses. Bald-headed these vultures,
with scrofulous looking necks and unwinking eyes. There was
something vile looking about these carrion-crows.
Having no wagon to bother with, Rhoda and her party could take
almost any direction they wished out of the valley. Their tent and
camp utensils were borne by the pack horse, so they struck into a
narrow bridle path over the hills to the southward.
The three men with the girls and Walter were in rather a gloomy
mood when they started off. Even Tom Collins seemed to have lost
his spirits. To tell the truth, they were all deeply enough
interested in the welfare of the ranch to feel depressed because of
the money loss to Mr. Hammond.
Rhoda, however, would not allow her visitors to be overshadowed by
this trouble for long. She possessed a good share of her father's
cheerfulness and dry humor. She began to tell semi-humorous tales of
her own experiences about the ranch and on the ranges, and this
started Tom and Frank to swapping tales--some of them altogether
too ridiculous to be wholly true.
Only Hesitation Kane remained silent; but that made him no
different from usual. He even grinned cheerfully under the sallies
of his companions.
About midday the little cavalcade wound around a knob of a hill and
arrived at the brink of a sheer bank, below which was a pocket in
the hillside. Tom Collins had been guiding them for more than an
hour, and now he announced this was the place.
"This here's it," he said with confidence. "I run that black outlaw
right up into this here pocket and--there he wasn't!"
"Oh, Tom!" demanded Rhoda, "are you sure this is the spot? A flea
couldn't hide down there."
"Honest to pickles! I ain't fooling, Miss Rhody," said the
cowpuncher earnestly. "When me and my roan come up this fur and
seen we didn't see nothin', I was plumb twisted. Says I to me:
'Here, Tom Collins, is where you got to go an' see a spectacles man
'cause you got optical delusions' And I sure thought I had."
"I'd say nothing could get out of that hole, 'cept by the way it
run in, 'ceptin' it had wings," said the other cowpuncher.
"Or get down into it, either," Nan Sherwood observed.
"Oh, yes. We can get down there. We'll make a path and do that
little thing," Tom rejoined, getting out of his saddle.
The banks all around the sink and as far as they could see along
the gully that led into it, were thirty feet or more high, and
quite unbroken. At no place could they see where the edge of the
bank had been disturbed.
Tom got a spade from the pack horse, and Frank got a bar. They
attacked the edge of the bank where, half way down, there was a
little slope to the wall. The gravelly soil yielded rather easily
to their digging, and they soon had the beginning of a path, down
which the hardy ponies would venture.
Hesitation Kane went first, and then the other cowboys. The girls
from the East were a bit timid; but every pony that descended made
the path more easy. The animals were so well trained that all the
riders had to do was to cling on and let their mounts have their
own way.
"Now, you see, we're down here," said Tom. "But there ain't a pony
in this bunch could climb up to the top, even by this path we made
comin' down--no, sir! And yet that outlaw done it--or something."
They started down the gulch, looking for a good place to camp for
the noon meal. Hesitation still led the pack horse, her line being
hitched to his saddle-ring. They all kept a bright lookout on
either hand for some possible path to the top of the bank by which
the outlaw horse might have tried to get out of the gulch.
Suddenly Hesitation and his mount and the pack horse disappeared.
The silent horse wrangler had taken to one side of a huge boulder
while the others had passed on the other side. Had the pack horse
not vented a frightened squeal the rest of the party might not have
noticed so quickly the absence of the two beasts and Mr. Kane, for
the latter did not utter a sound at first.
Walter jumped his horse for the place, and then shouted to the
others to come. Behind the boulder was only a narrow path between
it and a hole--a hole at least twenty feet across.
The sides of this hole were of loose gravel. The pack horse had
made a misstep and had started to slide backwards down the gravel
bank. The line snubbed to Kane's saddle was all that saved her from
going to the bottom.
The horse wrangler could hold her, but that was about all. Frank
arrived almost immediately and took a cast of his rope around the
pack saddle. Then the two ponies--his own and Kane's--dragged the
pack horse on to firm ground.
"'Nuther slip like that and that old pack mare would been in
Kingdom Come," said Tom, peering down the funnel-shaped hole. "I
say! you can't see the bottom of this here place."
"No. That out-thrust of rock hides whatever lies at the bottom,"
Walter agreed, likewise peering down. "Say! couldn't your outlaw
horse have tumbled down that place?"
"Criminy! do you reckon so?" asked Tom. "He might! Looks probable,
don't it?"
He slid out of his saddle and seized a big chunk of rock--all he
could lift. He started this sliding down the gravelly bank. In a
minute it had slid to the point where the ledge of rock hid from
their view the bottom of this sink. Beyond that it disappeared--and
there was no sound of its landing.
"Goodness!" cried Nan, who had ridden up to look, too. "Is that a
bottomless pit?"
"Might be, Miss," said Collins. "Anyway, I reckon that's where that
ol' black Satan of an outlaw went to. Too bad! He must be deader'n
a doornail down there."
The mystery seemed to be explained. But Walter was still thoughtful
and curious.
"What's over this way?" he asked, pointing to the hill east of the
gulch.
"More gullies," Rhoda said. "And somewhere is the bear den we're
going to."
"Is it far?" Walter asked.
"It's in the gulch right next beyond this one," said Tom Collins,
with confidence.
Walter evidently had something on his mind, but he said nothing
more. Only Nan noticed his brown study. But when she asked him what
it was about, he only shook his head.
They stopped for lunch, and then went on down the gulch. They were
less than a mile, Tom said, from the open plain, when the head of
the cavalcade rounded a turn in the gulch and a figure suddenly
leaped up from a shady nook--the figure of a man who had evidently
been asleep there and had not heard the cavalcade coming.
Rhoda, who was ahead, reached for the rifle under her knee. Nan was
amazed at the action of the girl of Rose Ranch, for the fellow
standing before them seemed harmless.
He was a Mexican. He wore an enormous straw sombrero, and there was
a good deal of silver cord and bangles upon it. He had a sash wound
around his waist, and into this was thrust a pair of silver-mounted
pistols. But he did not offer to draw them.
Perhaps he instantly apprehended the fact that the girls were well
guarded. The cowpunchers and Hesitation clattered forward. The
Mexican swept off his sombrero with much politeness, and bowed
before the surprised girls.
"Good-day, Thenoritas," he said in Spanish. "Have I startled you,
eh?"
As he stood up again his left hand rested on the butt of one of his
pistols. Somehow--he did it so quickly that it was startling to Nan
and her friends--Hesitation Kane drew his own pistol and thrust it
forward.
"Put 'em up!" he commanded.
The Mexican seemed to understand just what the horse wrangler
meant. He slowly, and with a deep scowl marring his face, raised
his empty hands above his head.