ADRIFT ON THE DESERT.
The consternation which Coyote’s words caused may be imagined. The
Border Boys hastily snatched up what they could, and with Professor
Wintergreen sprinting beside them, they dashed off, making for the
higher ground off to the right of their camping place. Behind them came
the wall of white, angry water, uplifting its snowy crest gleamingly
through the darkness.
But suddenly Jack stopped short.
“Here, take these,” he exclaimed, thrusting his rifle and blankets into
Ralph’s hands.
Before the other could reply Jack was off into the night, sprinting
away as he had not done since the field meet at Stonefell, when he won
that memorable two hundred yard dash. The lad had suddenly recollected,
and bitterly censured himself for it, too, that in the first flash of
panic he had entirely forgotten to turn their stock loose. Tethered as
they were, the animals would be drowned and the party helpless, unless
the creatures were set free to swim for their lives, or gallop off
before the flood.
Fortunately, it was not far, as the animals were staked out some
distance below the camp and in the general direction in which the
active lads had been fleeing.
As he ran, Jack felt for and found his knife, a big-bladed,
heavily-handled affair. Reaching the ponies’ sides, he hastily slashed,
with heavy sweeps of his stout blade, one after another of the tethers.
The animals, super-sensitive to approaching danger, were already wildly
excited, and as their halter lines parted one after another, they
dashed off madly.
The last animal for Jack to reach was Firewater. But the pony, instead
of dashing off like the others, nuzzled close to Jack, shivering and
sweating in an extremity of terror. Do what he could, Jack could not
get him to move. All at once the boy threw a quick glance behind as a
rapid footstep sounded.
“Coyote!” he cried.
“Yep, Jack, it’s that same dern fool,” cried the cow-puncher, “I see
you had brains enough to do what I orter done afore we started on the
run.”
“No time to talk about that now,” exclaimed Jack. “Look behind you.”
“Gee whillakers, boy, the flood’s upon us!”
Jack’s reply was to spring upon Firewater’s back.
“Here, Pete! Up behind me, quick!”
“Go on, Jack, and get away; I’ll take my chances.”
“Not much you won’t! Get up quick, now!”
The lad extended a foot. Pete rested his weight on it for a flash and
the next instant was mounted behind Jack.
“Yip-ee-ee-ee!” shrilled the boy, driving home his heels into the
pony’s flanks.
[Illustration: Firewater, balky no longer, gave a mad leap forward.
Behind them roared the oncoming flood.]
Firewater, balky no longer, gave a mad leap forward. Behind them roared
the oncoming flood.
“Make for the high ground!” shouted Pete, “it’s our only chance.”
Jack made no reply, but bent lower over Firewater’s withers, urging
the gallant little pony on. But suddenly their flight was checked.
And that, too, just as they had reached the comparative safety of the
higher ground on the banks of the dry water course which had become so
suddenly converted into a menace.
Firewater stuck his foot into a pocket-gopher hole. He struggled
bravely to maintain his footing, but what with the heavy load he was
carrying and the speed at which he had been suddenly halted, the pony
lost his equilibrium. The next instant Jack and Coyote were on the
ground while Firewater, thoroughly scared now, dashed off, whinnying
wildly in his terror.
Pete, too, was up in a flash, but Jack lay quite still. The force of
the fall had stunned him. The cow-puncher caught him up in a jiffy and
set off clumsily, running from the menace behind with the unconscious
boy in his arms.
But like most men whose lives have been spent in the saddle in our
great west, Pete was an indifferent runner. Then, too, his heavy
leather “chaps,” which he had not removed while on watch, hampered him.
Before he had run ten yards the onrush of water was upon him and his
senseless burden. The irresistible force of the flood swept him from
his feet in a flash and bore him on its swirling surface like a chip or
a straw. But half stunned, choked and dazed as he was, the cow-puncher
clung to Jack. How long he could have continued to do so is doubtful,
and this story might have had a far different termination. But
something that occurred just at that instant deprived Pete of further
responsibility in the matter.
Something struck him a sudden blow in the back of the head and a
thousand lights instantly surged and danced before his eyes. As he
lost consciousness, Pete felt himself seized by what appeared to be a
mass of rough arms or tentacles, and lifted bodily from his feet. Then
everything faded from his senses.
When he recovered it was broad daylight and Jack was bending over him.
Sick and weak as the rugged cow-puncher felt as his senses rushed back
like an arrested tide, he could not forbear smiling as he gazed at the
lad.
Jack’s costume was, to say the least, an airy one. It consisted in
fact, of part of his night clothing, badly torn, and a pair of boots
which he had just had time to put on in the hurried retreat from the
camp.
The boy saw the smile and guessed its reason. But the smile was
speedily replaced by a more serious expression as Pete sat up and at
once sought to have explained to him just what had happened.
“Something that felt like one of them octopusses you read about,
gripped me, and that’s about all I can recall,” he said; “what came
next?”
“I hardly know much more about that than you,” was Jack’s response,
“except that when I recovered my senses after that spill that Firewater
gave us I found myself half drowned, all tangled up in the roots of a
big tree that the flood was hurrying along. Feeling about me the first
thing I discovered was you, and I can tell you I was mighty glad, too,
Pete, old boy. No, don’t glare at me. I know,—or can guess,—that it
was you who saved my life after Firewater threw us both off and——”
“No more of that, youngster,” snorted Pete sternly, although his eyes
were filled with an odd moisture. “I reckon it was the old tree yonder
that saved us both. We were both struggling in the flood when it hit
me and put me to sleep for a while. It’s a good thing it came on roots
first or we might not have bin so chipper this partic’lar A. M.”
They both regarded the tree to which they probably owed their lives.
A big stick of timber of the pine variety, and evidently of mountain
growth, it lay a short distance from them just as the flood had left it
stranded. For the cloudburst over, the water had sunk in the dry river
bed as rapidly as it had arisen. Hardly a foot of muddy liquid now
remained in the river to show the aftermath of the wild watercourse of
the night.
“But now, what has become of the others?” exclaimed Jack anxiously. “I
hope they are all right.”
“I guess so, son,” said Pete, rising rather weakly to his feet, for the
blow the tree had struck him, while it had not broken the skin, had
been a stunning one.
“You see,” he went on, “they got a good start of us and should have
reached the high ground afore the water hit.”
“That’s so,” agreed Jack, “and I can see now that the water did not
rise so very high. It was its speed and anger that made it terrible.”
“Wonder how far that blamed old tree carried us,” said Pete, rather
anxiously. “It’s just curred to me that if we don’t connect with the
stock and some grub pretty quick, we’ll be in a bad fix.”
He gazed about him as he spoke. On every side stretched monotonous
plains covered with the same gray-green brush as the savannah amidst
which they had camped the night before. But the question in Pete’s mind
was whether or not it was the same plain or another altogether on which
they stood.
But fortunately for them, for they were not in the mood or condition
to stand hardship long, they were not destined to remain long in doubt
as to the whereabouts of their companions. While they were gazing
anxiously into the distance Jack’s keen eye suddenly detected a sharp
flash off to the eastward. It was as if the sun had glinted for an
instant on a bit of sharply cut diamond. The flash was as bright as a
sudden ray of fire. The next instant it was seen no more. But a second
later it flashed up again. This time the glitter was to be seen for a
longer interval.
“What on airth is it?” gasped Pete, to whom Jack had indicated the
phenomenon.
“Wait one moment and maybe I can tell you if it is what I hope,” cried
Jack in an excited tone. With burning eyes he watched the distant point
of light flashing and twinkling like a vanishing and reappearing star.
“Hooray!” he cried suddenly, “it’s all right! It’s Ralph and the rest
and they are all safe. But they don’t know yet where we are.”
Pete gazed at the boy as if he suspected that the stress of the night
might have turned his mind.
“Anything else you kin see off thar?” he asked sardonically.
“Nothing but that they say the horses are all right, and that if we see
their signals we are to send up a smoke column,” replied Jack calmly,
his countenance all aglow.
“Look hyar, Jack Merrill, I promised your father ter take care of yer,”
said Pete sternly, “an’ I don’t want ter take back a raving loonertick
to him. What’s all this mean?”
“That Ralph is signalling with a bit of mirror,—heliographing, they
call it in the army,” cried Jack, with a merry laugh, which rather
discomfited Pete.
“Wall, that may be, too,” he admitted grudgingly, “thar sun would catch
it and make it flash. But how under ther etarnal stars kin you tell
what he’s saying?”
“Simple enough,” rejoined Jack; “he was making the flashes long and
short,—using the Morse telegraph code, in fact. You know we had a
cadet corps at Stonefell to which we both belonged. Field signalling
and heliographing was part of our camping instruction, but I guess
neither of us ever dreamed it would come in handy in such a way as
this. That certainly was a bully idea of Ralph’s. He knew if we were
any place around we would see the flashes and be able to read them,
whereas we couldn’t have sighted them in the tall brush so easily and
might have missed them altogether.”
“Wall, what air we goin’ ter do now?” asked Pete, rather apathetically.
“Do? Why, light a fire, of course. Then they’ll see the smoke column
and come over to us with grub and the ponies.”
“Hum,” snorted Pete. “Got any matches?”
“Why, no. Haven’t you?”
“Nary a one.”
“Phew!” whistled Jack. “Now we are in a fix for certain. What can we
do?”
“Keep your shirt—or what’s left of it—on, son, you’ll need it,” said
Pete slowly, a smile overspreading his sun-bronzed features, “thar’s
more ways of killing cats than choking ’em ter death with superfine
cream. Likewise thar’s more ways of lighting a fire than by using
parlor matches.”
Jack watched Pete wonderingly as he took out his knife in silence and
strode off to the tree. He found a dead branch and whittling off the
wet outside bark soon reached the dry interior. This done, he cut the
wood down to a stick about two feet long and a little thicker than a
stout lead pencil. Then he hacked away at some more of the dry wood
till he had a small flat bit of thoroughly dry timber. In this he
excavated a small hole to fit the point of the pencil-like stick.
“Now git me some dry twigs from that brush yonder,” he directed Jack,
who had been gazing on these preparations with much interest and a
dawning perception of what the old plainsman was going to do.
By the time Jack was back with the twigs,—the dryest he could
find,—Pete had scraped off a lot of sawdust-like whittlings and piled
them about the hole he had dug out. Then taking the pencil-like stick
between his palms, he inserted its lower end in the hole, carefully
heaped the sawdust stuff about it, and began rotating it slowly at
first and then fast.
All at once a smell of burning wood permeated the air. From the
sawdust a tiny puff of blue smoke rolled up. Suddenly it broke into
flame.
“Now the twigs! Quick!” cried Pete, and as Jack gave him the dry bits
of stick he piled them on the blazing punk-wood, blowing cautiously
at the flame. In ten minutes he had a roaring fire. But the old
plainsman’s work wasn’t finished yet. He began hacking green branches
from the tree and piling them on top of his blaze.
Instantly a pillar of dun-colored, smoke, thick and greasy, rolled
upward into the still air.
Pete took off his leather coat and threw it over the smoking pyre,
smothering the column of vapor.
“Now then, son,” he said, with the faintest trace of triumph in his
voice, “yer see that this here hell-io-what-you-may-call ’em, ain’t
ther only trick in the plainsman’s bag. By raising and lowering that
coat you kin talk in your Remorse thing as long as you like.”
“Pete, I take off my hat to you,” exclaimed Jack, feeling ashamed
of the rather superior manner he had assumed when talking of the
heliograph a while before.
“That’s all right, son. But take it frum yer Uncle Dudley that we none
of us know everything. Thar’s things you kin larn from an Injun, jus’
as I larned how ter git that fire a-goin’.”
Kneeling by the smoldering smoke-pile, Jack raised and lowered the coat
at long and short intervals, forming a species of smoke telegraphy
easily readable by anyone who understood the Morse code.
An hour of anxious waiting followed and then upon the scene galloped
at top speed the rest of the adventurers bearing with them some food,
scanty but welcome, and best of all, the ponies and one rifle.