THE TERRORS OF THE CANYON.
“Don’t stop to look behind you, but back water the best you know how,”
said Bob, seeing that his companion now and then ceased his exertions,
and faced about on his seat to gaze at the canyon. “A few strong, steady
strokes will put us all right.”
George dropped his oar into the water again, and pushed it from him with
all his strength, while Bob exerted himself to the utmost to turn the
boat around with the bow up stream.
For a long time the contest seemed doubtful, but gradually the skiff
began to turn, and George was beginning to take heart again, when
suddenly he heard an ominous snap behind him, followed by a cry of alarm
from Bob.
The cold chills crept all over him. With an indescribable feeling of
terror, he turned quickly about, and saw his companion holding the stump
of his oar in his hands, while his eyes were riveted on the blade, which
was floating off with the current.
The two boys looked at each other in silence, and then they looked
toward the mouth of the canyon.
“We are the victims of treachery, George,” said Bob, as soon as he could
speak. “Somebody removed this leather, sawed the oar half in two, and
then put the leather back again, just as it was before. Give me your
oar. If I can keep her broadside to the stream, perhaps the current will
throw us against the bank.”
He did not speak nor act like a boy who stood in momentary fear of a
violent death. His face was very pale, but his voice and his hands were
steady, and his words were uttered with the greatest calmness and
deliberation. He was as cool, apparently, as he was while scudding
before the gale in Dick Langdon’s water-logged canoe.
George, on the contrary, was almost paralyzed with terror. His hands
trembled violently, and while he was trying to unship his oar, in order
to pass it back to his companion, it slipped from his grasp and fell
into the water, and although they both made such frantic efforts to
recover it that they came within a hair’s breadth of capsizing the
heavily-loaded skiff, it floated quickly out of their reach, carrying
with it the last particle of their courage and all their hopes of
escape.
Being left at the mercy of the current, the skiff gradually veered
around, until her bow pointed down stream, and once more started with
terrific speed toward the yawning mouth of the canyon.
“It’s all up with us, George,” said Bob, still speaking with wonderful
calmness. “No power on earth can save us now from going into that
canyon. What are you going to do?” he added, as George suddenly arose to
his feet and began pulling off his coat.
“I am not going under without making the best fight I can,” replied
George, in desperation. “I am going to see if I can tow the boat to the
bank.”
“Sit down!” said Bob, earnestly, at the same time seizing his friend,
and pulling him back into his seat. “Are you tired of life? You couldn’t
stem this current for an instant. It will be time enough for us to take
to the water when the boat is smashed on the rocks in the canyon.”
The boys were so completely stunned by their fearful peril, that they
had been blind and deaf to everything else; but now they turned their
eyes toward the shore, and saw that there was a terrible commotion
there.
When Ike saw the oar break in Bob’s hands, he had raised his voice in
frantic appeals for help, and soon succeeded in arousing all the inmates
of the ranch.
There were a dozen or more of them, all stalwart, courageous men, who
would have risked their lives any day to save Bob Howard.
But what could they do but stand helplessly there on the bank and see
the boat and its terrified occupants disappear in the canyon?
Some seemed to be urging one thing, and some another—all except Uncle
Bob and Arthur.
The former, who was of about as much use in an emergency as a wooden man
would have been, walked aimlessly up and down the porch, calling loudly
upon the herdsmen to do something and be quick about it, while Arthur
stood off by himself and gazed at the flying boat as if he were
fascinated.
The only ones who did not seem to lose their heads altogether were the
superintendent and Mr. Evans. As they ran swiftly along the bank to keep
pace with the boat, Bob saw that they were knotting together a couple of
long lariats.
“That’s our only chance, and it is a very slim one,” said he. “If we can
catch that rope when it is thrown to us, and they try to pull us up
against this current, they will draw the boat under.”
A moment later, a clear strong voice was heard above the excited gabble
of the terror-stricken herdsmen.
“Silence!” it cried. “I want to make those boys hear me. Bob, stand by
to catch this lasso, and we will haul you ashore. Are you all ready?”
“Let it come!” shouted Bob in reply.
In an instant the herdsmen became silent and expectant. Mr. Jacobs swung
the coiled lariat around his head a few times and then launched it out
over the water. Anxious eyes watched it as it flew through the air—not
in a direct line for the boat, but several feet in advance of it.
“It’s going wild!” cried George, in dismay.
“Don’t be alarmed,” was Bob’s encouraging response. “The current will
take us under it.”
And so it proved. The lariat fell squarely across the middle of the
boat, and the two boys threw themselves upon it and held fast to it.
A wild cheer burst from the men on shore, and was echoed by George
Edwards, who now looked upon their rescue as a thing beyond a doubt. But
Bob did not cheer, for he knew that the worst was yet to come.
The lariat was slipping through his fingers in spite of all he could do
to prevent it; so he took a turn with it around the nearest thwart, and
looked up to see what Mr. Jacobs was doing.
He and Mr. Evans who held only about four feet of the other end of the
lariat in their hands, were running at the top of their speed toward the
grove, evidently with the intention of using one of the trees as a
snubbing-post.
“On shore, there,” shouted Bob, whose excitement was greater than it had
been at any time since his oar broke in his hands. “Make another lariat
fast to your end, so that you can give us plenty of slack when the
strain comes. If we don’t have a good deal of slack the current will
certainly carry us under, unless something breaks.
“All right!” shouted Mr. Jacobs. “Hold fast to your end, and we will
bring you ashore safe and sound.”
He turned and said something to one of the herdsmen, who darted off
toward the ranch. When Bob saw that he gave up all hope.
“It’s no use, old fellow,” said he despairingly. “If that man must go to
the house for another lariat before they can give us any more rope, we
might as well make up our minds that we’ve got to go into that canyon.
As this is the last chance, I shall have to bid you good-by. I’ll say—”
Just then came the strain which Bob so much dreaded. The line was
suddenly whipped up out of the water and drawn as tight as a bow-string,
the spray flying from it in a perfect shower.
The stern of the skiff was jerked violently around toward the bank; but,
instead of swinging in, as everybody hoped and believed she would, she
careened until the water came in over the gunwale, and she seemed to be
on the very point of capsizing.
The boys threw themselves as far as they could over the opposite gunwale
to right her; but just then there was a loud crash, the line was torn
from their grasp, and Bob and his companion recovered themselves just in
time to see the thwart, to which the lariat had been made fast, fly out
of the boat and land in the water twenty feet astern.
The men on shore stood aghast, and the boys clutched the gunwales of the
boat, which, after rocking from side to side for a moment or two with
the greatest violence, finally came to an even keel, and shot toward the
canyon with accelerated speed.
It was too late now to do anything more. Escape was impossible, and even
George had given up all hope of it, and nerved himself to meet his fate.
He and Bob had just time to take one short farewell glance at their
agonized friends on shore, and then the boat was swept into the canyon,
and darkness, impenetrable darkness, closed about them!
No pen can describe the anguish of mind experienced by these two boys as
they sat there on the bottom of their boat, clinging to the gunwales
with a death-grip, holding their breath in suspense, and waiting for
their frail craft to be smashed into kindling wood against some unseen
obstruction.
[Illustration]
The wind whistled past their ears, and deeper and blacker grew the
darkness of the canyon as their boat sped on its way.
There was no sound heard save the rush of the water against the bank on
either hand, but the speed with which they were moving was simply
appalling.
Believing that a recumbent position was safer than an upright one—as the
darkness was so intense that it seemed as though the walls and roof of
the canyon must be within easy reach of his head—Bob threw himself
backward, and, with his head resting on the tent and his eyes directed
toward the top of the canyon, awaited the issue of events with a
calmness that surprised himself.
Now and then a little patch of light, far above him, would shoot by with
such surprising swiftness that his hair would fairly stand on end, and
he would clutch the sides of the boat with a firmer grip, and wonder how
much longer this wild ride must continue, and how long it would be
before the catastrophe would come.
The slightest obstruction in their course—a bush leaning over the water
and striking the bow of their boat, and turning it from its course by so
much as a hair’s breadth—would have ended all this suspense and anxiety
in an instant of time.
But there was no bush nor anything else in their way. The channel was as
smooth and deep here as it was in the valley they had left—how long ago?
Was it an hour or a day? Bob did not know, for he could take no note of
the flight of time.
The interior of the earth must be a long way off, he thought; and that
he was drawing nearer to it every minute seemed probable, for these
little patches of light he had noticed a while back were no longer to be
seen. Above, around and beneath him was darkness.
He could not even see the water by which he and his companion were borne
along. He wasn’t certain that he had a companion in his misery, for he
had not heard anything from George since they entered the canyon.
He was about to pronounce his name, when a blinding glare of light shot
down upon him so suddenly that it frightened him. Was he awake or
dreaming? He raised himself to a sitting posture and looked about him.
Behind him was a black opening between the mountains, looking exactly
like the one on the other side of the range, and in front and on each
side of him was a broad and fertile valley, through which the boat was
flying with undiminished speed.
Bob rubbed his eyes and looked again; and at the same moment, George
Edwards, who had also lain down in the boat to avoid hitting his head
against the rocks, which were at least two hundred feet above him,
straightened up, revealing a face so pale and haggard that Bob was
startled. But he was not so near dead as he seemed to be, as his actions
proved.
The river, where it entered the valley, made a sudden turn to the right,
and of course the current set into the bight of the bend, taking the
boat with it, and carrying it within ten or fifteen feet of the shore,
which was thickly lined with bushes.
George’s first act was to catch up the painter and jump overboard with
it; and, although the current whirled him along as if he had been a
feather, he succeeded in crossing it and reaching the slack waters near
the bank.
The rest was comparatively easy. A turn of the painter around a
convenient sapling held the boat until the current swung it into the
eddy, and the instant it touched the shore Bob Howard sprang out.
He and George had just strength enough to make the painter fast to the
sapling, and then they sank down side by side on the grass, and lay
there panting and exhausted.
They were so dazed and bewildered by their escape from the grasp of the
current, which they regarded as little short of miraculous, that they
could not speak.
They did not move until they were brought to their feet by a low,
rumbling noise, followed by an explosion so terrific that it would have
drowned the discharge of a battery of the heaviest artillery.
“What in the name of wonder was that?” gasped Bob, who was so weak that
he shook like a leaf.
George did not answer. He was looking over Bob’s shoulder, with eyes
that seemed ready to start from their sockets.
Bob faced about, and saw a sight that well nigh extinguished the little
spark of vitality which the terrors of the canyon had left in him.