ON THE DIVIDE.
It was five minutes to three, and there were fifty miles of cañon and
up-and-down trail over the divide to be covered. This meant that Motor
Matt must average twenty-five miles an hour for the next two hours. In
favorable parts of the trail he must do better than that, to off-set
losses of time where the going was most difficult.
The bed of the cañon was strewn with boulders, ranging in size from a
bucket to a hogshead. The road was plainly marked, but the last freshet
had sprinkled it with stones, large and small.
Mountain-wagons, constructed for service in such sections of the
country, were hauled over the smallest of the boulders, and where the
largest were met, and could not be avoided by a detour, the driver of
the wagon got out and rolled them away.
As Clip had said, however, the trail was impassable for automobiles.
A high-wheel wagon could bump and jerk its way over the stones, but a
low-wheel car with pneumatic tires would not have lasted half an hour
in the cañon, nor have traversed a mile of it.
On the other hand, the narrow tread of a motor-cycle enabled it to
dodge the rocks, leaving the trail only at points where the rocks were
so close together the machine could not get between them.
But sharp eyes, a firm hand, and unerring judgment were needed for
every foot of the way. This, of course, made anything like the best
speed impossible.
For several miles Matt weaved his way in and out, speeding up on the
comparatively clear stretches, and slowing down for places where the
most obstacles were encountered. The avoiding of sharp stones and
boulders at last became almost mechanical. With his gaze on the road
immediately in advance, his hands instinctively turned the _Comet_
right or left, as the exigencies of the case demanded.
When he could spare a little of his attention from the running of the
machine, his thoughts reverted to Clipperton and his heart saddened
with the hurt pride smoldering in Clip's eyes when they had parted in
the notch.
Clip's uncle--his mother's brother, most probably--was a half-breed and
a member of Dangerfield's gang. How Clip's sensitive soul must have
recoiled from confessing the truth to Matt! And yet Clip had been manly
enough to face the issue, and Matt liked him all the better for it.
"What a fellow's people are," thought Matt, "don't amount to a
picayune; it's what the fellow is himself that counts. But it was tough
on Clip to run into a relative and find him passing smoke-signals along
for that prince of rascals, Dangerfield. And then, it was pretty near
the last straw to have that relative roll a stone down the bank and put
Clip out of the running. I don't blame him for getting worked up."
A study of the speedometer showed Matt that he was not averaging more
than twenty miles an hour. This worried him. The necessity for doing
better than that was vital to the success of his mission, and yet,
without great risk to his machine, he did not see how he was going to
accomplish it. Hoping constantly for a better piece of road, he pushed
doggedly on.
The walls of the cañon were wide apart and high. They formed themselves
into pinnacles, and turrets, and parapets, and a fanciful mind could
easily liken them to the walls of a castle. From these features of the
cañon it had, no doubt, derived its name of "Castle Creek."
A stream flowed through the defile, but a stranger would not have
discovered this from a casual survey of the cañon's bed. The stream was
like most water-courses in Arizona, and flowed _under the sand_ and
next to the bed-rock. Here and there, at irregular intervals, the water
appeared in pools, pushed to the surface by a lifting of the underlying
rock.
Once Matt halted to snatch a drink from one of the diminutive ponds,
but in less than a minute he was astride the _Comet_ again and pushing
resolutely onward.
Here and there he passed a "flat," or level stretch of earth, brought
down by the waters from above and lodged in some bend of the gulch.
These flats were free from stones and covered with a scant growth of
cottonwoods and piñons.
Some time was gained by riding across these level, unobstructed
stretches.
A little more than half an hour after leaving the notch, Matt passed
a flat that lay at the foot of a gully running into the ravine. There
was an adobe house on the flat, a corral, and other evidences of a
rather extensive ranch. A man was standing in front of the house as
Matt hurried past. He was staring at the motor-cycle like a person in a
trance.
"What place is this?" called Matt, as he went by.
"Hot Springs," the rancher called back. "What sort of a contraption y'u
got thar, anyways?"
Matt told him, but probably the backwoodsman was not very much
enlightened.
North of Hot Springs the road was tolerably clear for several miles,
and the _Comet_ leaped along it at top speed. When near the end of the
good going, the road forked, a branch entering a gap in the right-hand
wall and climbing steeply toward the top.
Matt's heart gave a bound.
"Here's where I take the divide!" he muttered, swerving the _Comet_
into the opening and giving it every ounce of power for the climb. "Now
for Potter's Gap and Sheriff Burke."
Up and up went the trail, twisting back and forth in long horseshoe
curves. But for those curves, no wagon could ever have scaled that
frightful ascent. In places the road had seemingly been blasted out
of a sheer wall, and it was so narrow that a wagon would have had to
rub against the cliff-face in order to keep the opposite wheels from
slipping over the dizzy brink.
Matt's view of the cañon and of the surrounding hills opened as he
ascended. He had not much time for the view, however, for when he was
not peering at the trail, or catching a look at the face of his watch,
he was studying the speedometer. It was after four o'clock, and he was
making barely four miles an hour!
Higher and higher he climbed, coming steadily nearer to the top of the
divide. A light breeze fanned his face, and all around him he could
see mountain peaks pushing upward into the clear blue sky. Only the
_chug-chug_ of his laboring motor-cycle broke the stillness. Probably
never before, since time began, had those hills echoed with the puffing
of a steel horse.
At last the climbing trail dipped into a level tangent just below the
top of the mountain. After a straight-away run of a hundred yards, it
coiled serpentlike around the mountain's crest.
On Matt's left was a broken granite wall running vertically to the top
of the peak; on his right was a chasm, falling hundreds of feet into a
gloomy gulch. Between the chasm and the wall ran the ribbon of road,
eroded in places by wind and weather until it had a perceptible slant
outward.
A skidding of the wheels, the relaxation for an instant of a cool,
steady grip on the handlebars, or a sudden attack of dizziness would
have hurled the young courier into eternity.
In that hazardous place speed was not to be thought of. "Slow and sure"
had to be Matt's motto. He finished the tangent and began rounding the
curve. In no place on that fearsome bend was the road visible for more
than a dozen feet ahead.
While he was avoiding the fissures, and carefully picking his way
around the curve, a savage growl broke suddenly on his ears. With
racing pulses, he lifted his eyes and saw a huge dog crouching in the
path before him.
The dog was a Great Dane, big enough and seemingly savage enough for
a bear. While Matt stared, and wondered how and why the dog happened
to be there, a man in a blue shirt, sombrero, and with trousers tucked
in his boot-tops, emerged suddenly from behind a shoulder of rock. He
carried a club, and a look of intense satisfaction crossed his face as
he came in sight of Matt.
"Take him, Bolivar!" yelled the man, and Motor Matt was brought
suddenly face to face with unexpected peril.
With a vicious snarl, the dog lifted his great body into the air and
plunged toward the _Comet_. Matt had come to a quick stop, disengaging
his right foot from the toe-clip and bracing the motor-cycle upright.
He had time for no more than to throw his left arm over his face, when
the dog struck him.
The impact of the brute's body was terrific. Matt went down, with the
motor-cycle on top of him, head and shoulders over the brink of the
precipice.