At the first glance it seemed impossible for any one to descend into this rift, but the interpreter showed them that it was possible by leaping down, and directly after there was a loud, rattling noise, and an extremely large rattlesnake glided out of the rift on to the level ground. It was making its escape, when a sharp blow from the chief"s knife divided it nearly in two, and he finished his task by crushing its head with the b.u.t.t of his rifle.
"We must be on the look-out, Bart," said the Doctor, "if these reptiles are in any quant.i.ty;" and as the Beaver leaped down he followed, then came Bart, and Joses closed up the rear.
"I shall get all the sarpents," he grumbled. "You people will disturb them all, and they"ll do their stinging upon me."
Then the descent became so toilsome that conversation ceased, and nothing was heard but the crackling of twigs, the breaking off of branches, and the sharp, rustling noise that followed as the travellers forced their way through the bushes.
This lasted for about fifty yards, and then the descent became very rapid, and the trees larger and less crowded together. The rift widened, too, at times, but only to contract again; and then its sides so nearly approached that their path became terribly obscure, and without so energetic a guide as they possessed it would have required a stout-hearted man to proceed.
Every here and there they had to slide down the rock perhaps forty or fifty feet; then there would be a careful picking of the way over some rugged stones, and then another slide down for a while.
Once or twice it seemed as if they had come to a full stop, the rift being closed up by fallen ma.s.ses of earth and stones; but the Beaver mounted these boldly, as if he knew of their existence, and lowered himself gently down the other side, waiting to help the Doctor, for Bart laughingly declined, preferring as he did to leap from stone to stone, and swing himself over cracks that seemed almost impa.s.sable.
"This is nature"s work, Bart," the Doctor said, as he paused to wipe his streaming face. "No former inhabitants ever made this. It is an earthquake-split, I should say."
"But it might be easily made into a good path, sir," replied Bart.
"It might be made, Bart, but not easily, and it would require a great deal of engineering to do it. How dark it grows! You see nothing hardly can grow down here except these mosses and little fungi."
"Is it much farther, sir?" cried Bart.
"What! are you tired, my lad?"
"No, sir; not I. Only it seems as if we must be near the bottom of the canyon."
"No, not yet," said the Beaver in good English, and both the Doctor and Bart smiled, while the chief seemed pleased at his advance in the English tongue being noticed. "Long down--long down," he said in continuation.
"The Beaver-with-Sharp-Teeth tells the English chief and the little boy English chief that it is far yet to the bottom of the way to the rushing river of the mountain," said the interpreter, and the chief frowned at him angrily, while Bart felt as if he should like to kick him for calling him a "little boy English chief;" but the stoical Indian calmly and indifferently allowed the angry looks he received to pa.s.s, and followed the party down as they laboriously stepped from stone to stone.
"There"s a pretty good flush o" water here in rainy times, master,"
shouted Joses. "See how all the earth has been washed out. Shouldn"t wonder if you found gold here."
"I ought to have thought of that, Joses," replied the Doctor, as he proceeded to examine the crevices of the rock over which he was walking as well as he could for the gloom and obscurity of the place, and at the end of five minutes he uttered a cry of joy. "Here it is!" he exclaimed, holding up two or three rounded nodules of metal. "No; I am wrong," he said. "This light deceives me; it is silver."
To his surprise, the Beaver took them from his hand with a gesture of contempt, and threw the pieces away, though they would have purchased him a new blanket or an ample supply of ammunition at Lerisco or any other southern town.
"Wait," he said, airing his English once more. "Plenty! plenty!" and he pointed down towards the lower part of the narrow crevice or crack in the rock along which they were pa.s.sing.
"Go on, then," said the Doctor; and once more they continued their descent, which grew more difficult moment by moment, and more dark, and wild, and strange.
For now the rock towered up on either side to a tremendous height, and the daylight only appeared as a narrow streak of sky, dappled with dark spots where the trees hung over the rift. Then the sky was shut out altogether, and they went on with their descent in the midst of a curious gloom that reminded Bart of the hour just when the first streaks of dawn are beginning to appear in the morning sky.
This went on for what seemed to be some time, the descent growing steeper and more difficult; but at last there came a pleasant rushing sound, which Bart knew must be that of the river. Then there was the loud song of a bird, which floated up from far below, and then all at once a pale light appeared on the side of the rocks, which were now so near together that the sides in places nearly touched above their heads.
Five minutes" more arduous descent, and there was glistening wet moss on the rock, and the light was stronger, while the next minute the pure, clear light of day flashed up from an opening that seemed almost at their feet--an opening that was almost carpeted with verdant green, upon which, after dropping from a rock some ten feet high, they stood, pausing beneath an arch of interweaving boughs that almost hid the entrance to the rift, and there they stood, almost enraptured by the beauty of the scene.
For the bottom of the canyon had been reached, and its mighty verdure-decked, rocky walls rose up sheer above their heads, appearing to narrow towards the top, though this was an optical delusion. All was bright and glorious in the sunshine. The trees and shrubs were of a vivid green, the gra.s.s was brilliant with flowers; and running in serpentine waves through the middle of the lovely prairie that softly sloped down to it on either side, and whose sedges and clumps of trees dipped their tips in its sparkling waters, ran the river, dancing and foaming here over its rocky bed, there swirling round and forming deep pools, while in its clear waters as they approached Bart could see the glancing scales of innumerable fish on its sun-illumined shallows.
Hot and weary with their descent, the first act of all present was to dip their cups into the pure clear water, and then, as soon as their feverish thirst was allayed, the Doctor proceeded to test the sand of the river to see if it contained gold, while Bart, after wondering why a man who had discovered a silver mine of immense wealth could not be satisfied, went wandering off along the edge of the river, longing for some means of capturing the fish, whose silver scales flashed in the sunshine whenever they glided sidewise over some shallow ridge of yellow sand that would not allow of their swimming in the ordinary way.
Sometimes he was able to leap from rock to rock that stood out of the river bed, and formed a series of barriers, around which the swift stream fretted and boiled, rushing between them in a series of cascades; and wherever one of these ma.s.ses of water-worn stone lay in the midst of the rapid stream, Bart found that there was always a deep still transparent pool behind; and he had only to approach softly, and bend down or lie upon his chest, with his head beyond the edge, to see that this pool was the home of some splendid fish, a very tyrant ready to pounce upon everything that was swept into the still water.
"I wish we were not bothering about gold and silver," thought Bart, as after feasting his eyes upon the fish he turned to gaze upon the beauties of the drooping trees, and spire-shaped pines that grew as regular in shape as if they had been cast in the same mould; while, above all, the gloriously coloured walls of the canyon excited his wonder, and made him long to scale them, climbing into the many apparently inaccessible places, and hunting for fruit, and flower, and bird.
Bart had rambled down the river, so rapt in the beauties around him that he forgot all about the Doctor and his search for the precious metals.
All at once, as he was seated out upon a ma.s.s of stone by the river side, it struck him that, though he had watched the fish a good deal, it would be very pleasant to wade across a shallow to where a reef of rocks stood out of the water, so placed that as soon as he reached them he could leap from one to the other, and settle himself down almost in the very middle of the river; and when there he determined to wait his chance and see if he could not shoot two or three of the largest trout for their meal that night.
The plan was no sooner thought of than Bart proceeded to put it in execution.
He waded the shallow pretty easily, though he could not help wondering at the manner in which his feet sank down into the soft sand, which seemed to let them in right up to the knees at once, and then to close so tightly round them that, to use his own words, he seemed to have been thrusting his legs into leaden boots. However, he dragged them out, reached the first rock of the barrier or reef, and stood for a few minutes enjoying the beauty of the scene, while the stream rushed by on either side with tremendous force.
The next stone was a good five feet away, with a deep gla.s.sy flood rushing around. Bart leaped over it, landed safely, and found the next rock quite six feet distant, and a good deal higher than the one he was upon.
He paused for a moment or two to think what would be the consequences if he did not reach this stone, and judged that it meant a good ducking and a bit of a swim to one of the shallows below.
"But I should get my rifle and cartridges wet," he said aloud, "and that would never do. Shall I? Shan"t I?"
Bart"s answer was to gather himself up and leap, with the result that he just reached the edge of the rock, and throwing himself forward managed to hold on, and then scramble up in safety.
Going back"s easy enough, thought Bart, as he prepared to bound to the next rock, a long ma.s.s, like the back of some monstrous alligator just rising above the flood. Along this he walked seven or eight yards, jumped from block to block of a dozen more rugged pieces, and then bounded upon a roughly semi-circular piece that ended the ridge like a bastion, beyond which the water ran deep and swift, with many an eddy and mighty curl.
"This is grand!" cried Bart, whose eyes flashed with pleasure; and settling himself down in a comfortable position, he laid his rifle across his knees with the intention of watching the fish in a shallow just above him, but only to forget all about them directly after, as he sat enjoying the beauties of the scene, and wished that his sisterly companion Maude were there to see how wonderfully grand their mother Nature could be.
"If there were no Indians," thought Bart, "and a good large town close by, what a lovely place this would be for a house. I could find a splendid spot; and then one could hunt on the plains, and shoot and fish, and the Doctor could find silver and gold, and--good gracious!
What"s that?"
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
A NARROW ESCAPE.
Bart laid down his rifle as he uttered this very feminine exclamation, and shading his eyes, gazed before him up the river.
For as he had been dreamily gazing before him at the shallow where the water ran over a bed of the purest sand for about a hundred yards, it seemed to him that he had seen a dark something roll over, and then for a moment a hand appeared above the water, or else it was the ragged leaf of some great water-plant washed out from its place of growth in the bank.
"It looks like--it must be--it is!" cried Bart. "Somebody has fallen in, and is drowning."
As he thought this a chill feeling of horror seemed to rob him of the power of motion. And now, as he gazed at the glittering water with starting eyes, he knew that there was no mistake--it was no fancy, for their was a body being rolled over and over by the stream, now catching, now sweeping along swiftly, and nearer and nearer to where the lad crouched.
The water before him was shallow enough, and all clear sand, so without hesitation Bart lowered himself down from the rock, stepped on to the sand with the water now to his knees, and was then about to wade towards the body, when he turned sharply and clutched the rough surface of the rock, clinging tightly, and after a brief struggle managed to clamber back panting, and with the perspiration in great drops upon his brow.
He knew now what he had only partly realised before, and that was the fact that these beautiful, smooth sands, over which the swift current pleasantly glided, were quicksands of the most deadly kind, and that if he had not struggled back there would have been no chance of escape.
Another step would have been fatal, and he must have gone down, for no swimming could avail in such a strait.
But Bart, in spite of the shock of his narrow escape, had not forgotten the object for which he had lowered himself from the rock, and gazing eagerly towards the shallows, he saw that it was just being swept off then into the deep water that rushed round the b.u.t.tress upon which he stood.
It was the work of moments. Reaching out as far as he could, he just managed to grip the clinging garment of the object sweeping by, and as he grasped it tightly, so great was the power of the water, that he felt a sudden s.n.a.t.c.h that threatened to tear the prize from his hand. But Bart held on fiercely, and before he could fully comprehend his position he found that he had overbalanced himself, and the next moment he had gone under with a sullen plunge.