CHAPTER XXIV.

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.

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.