A turn of the rope about one of the bridge rods served to check the speed of their descent, and while Baldy Peters got over the railing and down on to the stone abutment, that he might the better see how far to lower the men, the rest held onto the ropes and let them down.
Baldy, crouching low on the abutment, peered down into the darkness and gave orders for the work, so that when the two ropes were tied to a rod, each man was swinging in the water breast deep. He clambered back onto the bridge, and the four punchers hastened out into the darkness after the rest of the gang, who were waiting for them not far off.
The next morning about daybreak, four hors.e.m.e.n rode out of the camp and headed for the New Mexico line, across which they felt themselves reasonably safe; for they well knew that the marshal would never follow and bring them back to relate in court the way they outwitted him and Tex. All they feared was that he would take a shot at them the first time he got sight of them, as he certainly would have done had he ever "met up with" either of the guilty four.
The boys were "drifters," anyhow, as much at home in one place as another, and good hands were always in demand on the ranches in those days, so it mattered little where they brought up.
As for the marshal and Tex, their first impression was that they were to be lynched; then they thought that they were to drown, which was even worse; finally, however, when they realized what the boys really meant to do, their rage knew no bounds. The marshal would almost have preferred to be hung, for he quickly foresaw that when they were rescued, the ridicule the affair would cause throughout the county would everlastingly kill his chances for any office. Had they been hung, or even drowned, they would have been heroes, even though dead ones; but this trick would turn a laugh against them as long as they lived.
Luckily for the two unfortunates, right below the place from which they were lowered, instead of the river running in its regular channel, there was a great eddy, or swirl, where the water had cut a deep hole in the sandy river bed. Here the water was quite deep and had but little movement, except a slow circling motion. In this they swung at anchor, from midnight until broad daylight. The water caused the ropes to shrink and draw until they suffered a great deal where they cut into their wrists, making it an utter impossibility for them to untie the knots, although they worked diligently trying to get them loose in some way.
The water was cold and their limbs soon became so numb that they could hardly move either hands or legs. They wore their voices out calling for help.
The boys, in lowering them down, had been cunning enough to fasten them far enough apart so they could not aid each other to get loose, and while from the motion of the water they occasionally b.u.mped against one another, they quickly drifted apart, as helpless as if in two strait-jackets.
About sunrise, a Mormon boy, belonging to a freighter outfit, which was camped over in town, going out after the horses which had been taken across the river the night before to graze, came whistling down the road to the bridge, and started to cross. As soon as his footfalls were heard on the flooring of the structure, the almost helpless men below roused and began to call as loudly as they were able with their numb lips and jaws chattering like castanets. It took him a minute or two to locate the voices.
The lad took one hasty look over the railing of the bridge, and, with a shriek of horror, fled toward town as fast as his feet could carry him.
Here he told the first man he met that he had seen two bodies hanging to the bridge, and a crowd was soon on the way to the river, expecting to find the results of a vigilance committee suspended from the stringers.
The two men were quickly pulled up on to the bridge and the ropes that bound them like steel bands were cut from their bodies. Both men were so stiff that they had to be carried to town, and the doctor and several men worked over them for more than an hour trying to restore the circulation in their stiffened limbs and almost frozen bodies. The story of their capture set the whole town to laughing, and the more people laughed, the more ridiculous the happening grew. Nor did it lose anything in the telling and soon the entire county was also laughing over the misfortunes of the two peace officers. Jenkins" chief political opponent naturally made the most of it and under such conditions that gentleman was literally laughed into political obscurity.
About that time the Wells-Fargo Express Company feared a hold-up on the railroad, and Jenkins and Tex, glad to leave the scene of their water-cure adventure, secured positions as guards and soon dropped out of polite society in Horse Head as represented by the gang around the "Bucket of Blood" and its immediate vicinity.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_They gave the money to Jackson, the Cross J wagon boss_"]
The next time they came to town the "Cross J" boys chipped in a dollar each and gave it to old "Dad," the cook, counted the luckiest "wheel"
player in the bunch, who took the coin and with a burst of good luck soon ran it up to something over a hundred dollars at the roulette wheel. This entire amount he gave to Jackson the wagon boss, who went down to Chinese Louie"s place, and poured it out on the counter before the heathen"s astonished eyes, as a peace offering from the "shoot "em up" crowd that had wrecked his place.
That night about midnight Louie and his a.s.sistant set out to the boys the very swellest "feed" his culinary abilities could prepare, and the affair of the shooting up of Horse Head and the putting of the marshal and his aid-de-camp to soak under the bridge in the cold nasty waters of the Rio Puerco was thus amicably settled over the viands that the Chinaman furnished.