Overland Part 39

Then he splashed into the river, joined his hard-pressed comrades, got his head under the centre of the Buchanan, and lifted st.u.r.dily. In another minute the precious burden was safe on a large flat rock, and the three men were stretched out panting beside it. Glover was used up; he was trembling from head to foot with fatigue; he had reached sh.o.r.e just in time to fall on it instead of into the river.

"Ye'd make a purty soldier," scoffed Sweeny, a habitual chaffer, like most Irishmen.

"It was the histin' that busted me," gasped the skipper. "I can't handle a ton o' water."

"G.o.damighty made ye already busted, I'm a thinkin'," retorted Sweeny.

As soon as Glover could rise he examined the Buchanan. There was a ragged rent in the bottom four inches long, and the canvas in other places had been badly rubbed. The voyagers looked at the hole, looked at the horrible chasm which locked them in, and thought with a sudden despair of the great environment of desert.

The situation could hardly be more gloomy. Having voyaged for five days in the Great Canon, they were entangled in the very centre of the folds of that monstrous anaconda. Their footing was a lap of level not more than thirty yards in length by ten in breadth, strewn with pebbles and bowlders, and showing not one spire of vegetation. Above them rose a precipice, the summit of which they could not see, but which was undoubtedly a mile in height. Had there been armies or cities over their heads, they could not have discovered it by either eye or ear.

At their feet was the Colorado, a broad rush of liquid porphyry, swift and pitiless. By its color and its air of stoical cruelty it put one in mind of the red race of America, from whose desert mountains it came and through whose wildernesses it hurried. On the other side of this grim current rose precipices five thousand feet high, stretching to right and left as far as the eye could pierce. Certainly never before did shipwrecked men gaze upon such imprisoning immensity and inhospitable sterility.

Directly opposite them was horrible magnificence. The face of the fronting rampart was gashed a mile deep by the gorge of a subsidiary canon. The fissure was not a clean one, with even sides. The strata had been torn, ground, and tattered by the river, which had first raged over them and then through them. It was a Petra of ruins, painted with all stony colors, and sculptured into a million outlines. On one of the boldest abutments of the ravine perched an enchanted castle with towers and spires hundreds of feet in height. Opposite, but further up the gap, rose a rounded mountain-head of solid sandstone and limestone. Still higher and more retired, towering as if to look into the distant canon of the Colorado, ran the enormous terrace of one of the loftier plateaus, its broad, bald forehead wrinkled with furrows that had once held cataracts. But language has no charm which can master these sublimities and horrors. It stammers; it repeats the same words over and over; it can only _begin_ to tell the monstrous truth.

"Looks like we was in our grave," sighed Glover.

"Liftinant," jerked out Sweeny, "I'm thinkin' we're dead. We ain't livin', Liftinant. We've been buried. We've no business trying to _walk_."

Thurstane had the same sense of profound depression; but he called up his courage and sought to cheer his comrades.

"We must do our best to come to life," he said. "Mr. Glover, can nothing be done with the boat?"

"Can't fix it," replied the skipper, fingering the ragged hole. "Nothin'

to patch it with."

"There are the bearskins," suggested Thurstane.

Glover slapped his thigh, got up, danced a double-shuffle, and sat down again to consider his job. After a full minute Sweeny caught the idea also and set up a haw-haw of exultant laughter, which brought back echoes from the other side of the canon, as if a thousand Paddies were holding revel there.

"Oh! yees may laugh," retorted Sweeny, "but yees can't laugh us out av it."

"I'll sheath the whole bottom with bearskin," said Glover. "Then we can let her grind. It'll be an all day's ch.o.r.e, Capm--perhaps two days."

They pa.s.sed thirty-six hours in this miserable bivouac. Glover worked during every moment of daylight. No one else could do anything. A green hand might break a needle, and a needle broken was a step toward death.

From dawn to dusk he planned, cut, punctured, and sewed with the patience of an old sailor, until he had covered the rent with a patch of bearskin which fitted as if it had grown there. Finally the whole bottom was doubled with hide, the long, coa.r.s.e fur still on it, and the grain running from stem to stern so as to aid in sliding over the sand and pebbles of the shallows.

While Glover worked the others slept, lounged, cooked, waited. There was no food, by the way, but the hard, leathery, tasteless jerked meat of the grizzly bears, which had begun to pall upon them so they could hardly swallow it. Eating was merely a duty, and a disagreeable one.

When Glover announced that the boat was ready for launching, Sweeny uttered a yelp of joy, like a dog who sees a prospect of hunting.

"Ah, you paddywhack!" growled the skipper. "All this work for you. Punch another hole, 'n' I'll take yer own hide to patch it."

"I'll give ye lave," returned Sweeny. "Wan bare skin 's good as another.

Only I might want me own back agin for dress-parade."

Once more on the Colorado. Although the boat floated deeper than before, navigation in it was undoubtedly safer, so that they made bolder ventures and swifter progress. Such portages, however, as they were still obliged to traverse, were very severe, inasmuch as the Buchanan was now much above its original weight. Several times they had to carry one half of their materials for a mile or more, through a labyrinth of rocks, and then trudge back to get the other half.

Meantime their power of endurance was diminishing. The frequent wettings, the shivering nights, the great changes of temperature, the stale and wretched food, the constant anxiety, were sapping their health and strength. On the tenth day of their wanderings in the Great Canon Glover began to complain of rheumatism.

"These cussed draughts!" he groaned. "It's jest like travellin' in a bellows nozzle."

"Wid the divil himself at the bellys," added Sweeny. "Faix, an' I wish he'd blow us clane out intirely. I'm gittin' tired o' this same, I am. I didn't lisht to sarve undher ground."

"Patience, Sweeny," smiled Thurstane. "We must be nearly through the canon."

"An' where will we come out, Liftinant? Is it in Ameriky? Bedad, we ought to be close to the Chaynees by this time. Liftinant, what sort o' paple lives up atop of us, annyway?"

"I don't suppose anybody lives up there," replied the officer, raising his eyes to the dizzy precipices above. "This whole region is said to be a desert."

"Be gorry, an' it 'll stay a desert till the ind o' the worrld afore I'll poppylate it. It wasn't made for Sweenys. I haven't seen sile enough in tin days to raise wan pataty. As for livin' on dried grizzly, I'd like betther for the grizzlies to live on me. Liftinant, I niver see sich harrd atin'. It tires the top av me head off to chew it."

About noon of the twelfth day in the Great Canon this perilous and sublime navigation came to a close. The walls of the chasm suddenly spread out into a considerable opening, which absolutely seemed level ground to the voyagers, although it was enc.u.mbered with mounds or b.u.t.tes of granite and sandstone. This opening was produced by the entrance into the main channel of a subsidiary one, coming from the south. At first they did not observe further particulars, for they were in extreme danger of shipwreck, the river being studded with rocks and running like a mill-race. But on reaching the quieter water below the rapid, they saw that the branch canon contained a rivulet, and that where the two streams united there was a triangular basin, offering a safe harbor.

"Paddle!" shouted Thurstane, pointing to the creek. "Don't let her go by.

This is our place."

A desperate struggle dragged the boat out of the rushing Colorado into the tranquillity of the basin. Everything was landed; the boat itself was hoisted on to the rocks; the voyage was over.

"Think ye know yer way, Capm?" queried Glover, squinting doubtfully up the arid recesses of the smaller canon.

"Of course I may be mistaken. But even if it is not Diamond Creek, it will take us in our direction. We have made westing enough to have the Cactus Pa.s.s very nearly south of us."

As there was still a chance of returning to the river, the boat was taken to pieces, rolled up, and hidden under a pile of stones and driftwood. The small remnant of jerked meat was divided into three portions. Glover, on account of his inferior muscle and his rheumatism, was relieved of his gun, which was given to Sweeny. Canteens were filled, blankets slung, ammunition belts buckled, and the march commenced.

Arrived at a rocky knoll which looked up both waterways, the three men halted to take a last glance at the Great Canon, the scene of a pilgrimage that had been a poem, though a terrible one. The Colorado here was not more than fifty yards wide, and only a few hundred yards of its course were visible either way, for the confluence was at the apex of a bend. The dark, sullen, hopeless, cruel current rushed out of one mountain-built mystery into another. The walls of the abyss rose straight from the water into dizzy abutments, conical peaks, and rounded ma.s.ses, beyond and above which gleamed the distant sunlit walls of a higher terrace of the plateau.

"Come along wid ye," said Sweeny to Glover, "It's enough to give ye the rheumatiz in the oyes to luk at the nasty black hole. I'm thinkin' it's the divil's own place, wid the fires out."

The Diamond Creek Canon, although far inferior to its giant neighbor, was nevertheless a wonderful excavation, striking audaciously into sombre mountain recesses, sublime with precipices, peaks, and grotesque ma.s.ses.

The footing was of the ruggedest, a _debris_ of confused and eroded rocks, the pathway of an extinct river. One thing was beautiful: the creek was a perfect contrast to the turbid Colorado; its waters were as clear and bright as crystal. Sweeny halted over and over to look at it, his mouth open and eyes twinkling like a pleased dog.

"An' there's nothing nagurish about that, now," he chuckled. "A pataty ud laugh to be biled in it."

After slowly ascending for a quarter of a mile, they turned a bend and came upon a scene which seemed to them like a garden. They were in a broad opening, made by the confluence of two canons. Into this gigantic rocky nest had been dropped an oasis of turf and of thickets of green willows.

Through the centre of the verdure the Diamond Creek flowed dimpling over a pebbly bed, or shot in sparkles between barring bowlders, or plunged over shelves in toy cascades. The travellers had seen nothing so hospitable in nature since leaving the country of the Moquis weeks before.

Sweeny screamed like a delighted child. "Oh! an' that's just like ould Oirland. Oh, luk at the turrf! D'ye iver see the loikes o'that, now? The blessed turrf! Here ye be, right in the divil's own garden. Liftinant, if ye'll let me build a fort here, I'll garrison it. I'll stay here me whole term of sarvice."

"Halt," said Thurstane. "We'll eat, refill canteens, and inspect arms. If this is Diamond Canon, and I think there is no doubt of it, we may expect to find Indians soon."

"I'll fight 'em," declared Sweeny. "An' if they've got anythin' betther nor dried grizzly, I'll have it."

"Wait for orders," cautioned Thurstane. "No firing without orders."

After cleaning their guns and chewing their tough and stale rations, they resumed their march, leaving the rivulet and following the canon, which led toward the southwest. As they were now regaining the level of the plateau, their advance was a constant and difficult ascent, sometimes struggling through labyrinths of detached rocks, and sometimes climbing steep shelves which had once been the leaping-places of cataracts. The sides of the chasm were two thousand feet high, and it was entered by branch ravines of equal grandeur.

The sun had set for them, although he was still high above the horizon of upper earth, when Thurstane halted and whispered, "Wigwams!"